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The history of interpretation [of the Bible] is fascinating but that is something else.
Frank Moore Cross
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Frank Moore Cross
Age: 91 †
Born: 1921
Born: July 13
Died: 2012
Died: October 16
Archaeologist
Historian
Theologian
University Teacher
Marin County
California
Bible
History
Else
Something
Interpretation
Fascinating
More quotes by Frank Moore Cross
There was certainly an old law code which stands behind the earliest form of Deuteronomy. Presumably that is what was lost.
Frank Moore Cross
You have miracles [in the Hebrew Bible], yes, but they're not the work, normally, of demons.
Frank Moore Cross
Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.
Frank Moore Cross
The Bible is one, Old and New, in my particular tradition.
Frank Moore Cross
We want to live in ambiguity. This is the human condition.
Frank Moore Cross
When you come to the New Testament you can't even swing a cat without hitting three demons and two spirits. And magic becomes something that is everywhere. In the Hebrew Bible this sort of thing doesn't go on.
Frank Moore Cross
What is public for you, Elie [Wiesel], is private for Frank [Moore Cross], and the reverse.
Frank Moore Cross
I guess what this is reflecting is my own search for answers that I can't find. Frank [Moore Cross] and I have examined a lot of archaeological materials in the hope of finding out.
Frank Moore Cross
I have referred to [Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] on occasion, but I doubt that you will find his name in any of my indices. In my view, he is important in the history of interpretation and that is a subject I have not approached directly.
Frank Moore Cross
Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.
Frank Moore Cross
In fact, we're both [with Elie Wiesel] engaged with the text. We search for different things, we find different things. There is a side of what he does that I'd like to do, a bit more privately. I'm not sure he is as interested in history, as I am.
Frank Moore Cross
Elie [Wiesel], when you ask, Why do I want to know, I'm trying to grab the holy. And I'm getting thrown back.
Frank Moore Cross
I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?
Frank Moore Cross
I became intimately acquainted with the Bible only as a theological student.
Frank Moore Cross
I would not speak of Judaism as a Talmudic or Rabbinic religion. It's a Biblical religion.
Frank Moore Cross
Frank [Moore Cross], publicly dissects the text but he has a private, passionate relationship to the text that he doesn't often speak of publicly.
Frank Moore Cross
That is to say, the inspiration, the interpretive richness of the text is what Elie [Wiesel] does publicly, and his interest in history is his private reserve he knows that he is not an expert in dissecting the text the way Frank [Moore Cross] does.
Frank Moore Cross
We are thrown back on the text, for the most part. Archaeology can give us background. It doesn't either confirm or disprove the Bible, but it may illuminate it.
Frank Moore Cross
The Hebrew Bible defines Judaism. It's certainly true that the Talmudic interpretations become authoritative and normative, but they are interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. So that is always there.
Frank Moore Cross
I do think that the Josianic return to the archaic form of the Passover is appropriate and, indeed, historical. Josiah does go back to a different, earlier tradition, the time of a central sanctuary in which the law code was read. But then there were accretions to the Book of Deuteronomy.
Frank Moore Cross
