Quotes from Frank Moore Cross

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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], publicly dissects the text but he has a private, passionate relationship to the text that he doesn't often speak of publicly.

I would not speak of Judaism as a Talmudic or Rabbinic religion. It's a Biblical religion.

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

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

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