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.

Both of you [Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross] are giants, dare I say nephilim [giants; see Genesis 6:4; Numbers 13:33], in your world.

The Bible is a book that has shaped my life, my beliefs, my ethics, my moral concerns, my religious outlook. This is not something, however, that I have taught or written about. This has been, if you wish, a private aspect.

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

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.

In my work, I attempt to deal with the Bible as I would deal with any work of literature.

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.