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.

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

I don't think there is any other professional Bible scholar who is more respected and honored [like Frank Moore Cross].

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.

Frank Moore Cross is also a leading Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, which he's been since they were discovered more than 50 years ago. He's just completing an edition of one of the most significant scrolls for Biblical studies, the Book of Samuel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[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 see history in Pentateuch. I see revealed truth in it. I see in it human holiness as much as divine inspiration. Wherever you open it, any page, you know that you are in the presence of something that exists nowhere else.