Frank Moore Cross: I try to look at the texts and say: Is there a way...

My own interest is far more in the Hebrew Bible. My religion is more personally related to the Hebrew Bible than it is to the New Testament.

Frank Moore Cross

new-testament hebrew interest

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

views doubt names

The Garden of Eden presents the same story: If you want to make yourself gods, you'll find you're akin to the animals.

Frank Moore Cross

garden eden animal

I have a concordance to the Talmud at home, which I have to use.

Frank Moore Cross

use home

Happily, I come out of a Calvinist tradition in which the Hebrew Bible carries as much authority as the New Testament. No different weight is given to one or the other.

Frank Moore Cross

hebrew different weight

The Bible is one, Old and New, in my particular tradition.

Frank Moore Cross

old-and-new tradition particular

I find myself a little uncomfortable in the New Testament environment. And this is also true of what I would call late Judaism, the Judaism of the Second Temple and later.

Frank Moore Cross

temples environment littles

With the Hebrew Bible, you're living in an austere world.

Frank Moore Cross

hebrew-bible hebrew world

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

swings cat two

You have miracles [in the Hebrew Bible], yes, but they're not the work, normally, of demons.

Frank Moore Cross

hebrew demon miracle

[The story of Adam and Eve] it's poetry. One must interpret it as poetry. The first 11 chapters of Genesis [the Primeval History] are absolutely remarkable.

Frank Moore Cross

adam stories firsts

I became intimately acquainted with the Bible only as a theological student.

Frank Moore Cross

theological students

My father's religious life was not Biblically centered. He was a saintly man, whom I could never emulate, so I went into scholarship rather than into the kind of pastoral activity that he pursued.

Frank Moore Cross

religious men father

The history of interpretation [of the Bible] is fascinating; but that is something else.

Frank Moore Cross

interpretation fascinating

It has been said that in order to pursue the history of Biblical interpretation, you must include the whole philosophy of the West, which informs it at every stage.

Frank Moore Cross

biblical philosophy order

It fascinates me to analyze these things and, yes, to see layers in the texts and the building up of Biblical literature. I think this provides insights that one simply does not get by the direct approach.

Frank Moore Cross

building-up biblical thinking

I prefer to have all of this apparatus - historical, literary, critical - and then, beyond initial innocence and naiveté, to try to achieve a new innocence, a new naiveté.

Frank Moore Cross

innocence historical trying

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

philosophical israel way

My father was a Social Gospel, far-left liberal, and to some degree a mystic. But we did not have Bible readings; we had prayers.

Frank Moore Cross

reading prayer father

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

structure interest criticism

I try to look at the texts and say: Is there a way that I can find history in the texts and separate it from what may be the mythological elements, and I don't find any rules for that.