Elie Wiesel has for years served as the moral compass of the civilized world. For many of us, including me, he has defined the Holocaust.

[My father was ] Presbyterian [minister]. But I did not take the Bible seriously until I was forced to take Hebrew at McCormick Theological Seminary.

I think that there is a certain schizophrenic aspect to my own relation to the Bible.

It would be hard to find a more influential book of Biblical studies than his Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [1973].

We differ [with Frank Moore Cross] simply because of our differing backgrounds.

I've been on a faculty in a university, and I felt it was incumbent on me to deal with the Bible not as something I was attempting to convert people to, or to have them enter into my religious experience, but rather as an academic and scientific discipline.

To treat the history of Israel as I would treat the history of England or Russia or China; that is, an attempt at a scientific, historical approach.I am particularly fascinated with origins.