We have a text before us, an ancient text, a living text, and we try to enter it, not only to decipher it, but to penetrate it, to become part of it, similar to the way every student becomes part of a teacher's texture. That's how I see our [with Frank Moore Cross] two differing approaches.

As long as I'm giving a little hype, I can't resist saying that Elie [Wiesel] has also written a number of pieces for Bible Review, for which I serve as editor.

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.

We [with Frank Moore Cross] have the same fervor, the same passion when in front of us is a page, a unique page - every page is unique - of the Pentateuch.

I know that the Bible has been a central influence in [Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross] lives - but in a very different way. In truth, you inhabit very different Biblical worlds.

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.

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.