We are thrown back on the text, for the most part. Archaeology can give us background. It doesn't either confirm or disprove the Bible, but it may illuminate it.

It fascinates me to analyze these things and, yes, to see layers in the texts and the building up of Biblical literature. I think this provides insights that one simply does not get by the direct approach.

With the Hebrew Bible, you're living in an austere world.

Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.

The Garden of Eden presents the same story: If you want to make yourself gods, you'll find you're akin to the animals.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

I became intimately acquainted with the Bible only as a theological student.