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

Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.

My father was a Social Gospel, far-left liberal, and to some degree a mystic. But we did not have Bible readings; we had prayers.

Furthermore, I think there was, in fact, a celebration of Passover in the era of the Judges in which the epic was recited in the context of the central sanctuary. That tradition was displaced by the Feast of Enthronement beginning in the Solomonic era.

When you come to the New Testament you can't even swing a cat without hitting three demons and two spirits. And magic becomes something that is everywhere. In the Hebrew Bible this sort of thing doesn't go on.

I guess what this is reflecting is my own search for answers that I can't find. Frank [Moore Cross] and I have examined a lot of archaeological materials in the hope of finding out.

That is to say, the inspiration, the interpretive richness of the text is what Elie [Wiesel] does publicly, and his interest in history is his private reserve; he knows that he is not an expert in dissecting the text the way Frank [Moore Cross] does.