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.

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.

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.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Elie Wiesel is also the author of more than 40 books. As relevant as anything to today's discussion are the insights into the Biblical texts that are contained in his lectures and books. They include Messengers of God [1976], Five Biblical Portraits [1978] and his just-published Wise Men and Their Tales - Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic and Hasidic Masters.

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

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.

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.