Most of my professional work has been in these areas - as a historical critic, as a literary critic. I've done very little in the history of interpretation [as Elie Wiesel has]. I've been interested in it, but I have not contributed to that field, really.

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.

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.

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

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

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.