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.

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.

I think that there are these two very different sides to my relation to the Bible: one, my professional life; the other, a more private concern, interest and fascination with the Bible.

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

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.

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