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

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.

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.

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

If one attempts to achieve deity or to have the holy, he is thrown back; he is refused. His language is taken from him. He can no longer even communicate. That's the Tower of Babel.

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 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.

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

We want to live in ambiguity. This is the human condition.

There was certainly an old law code which stands behind the earliest form of Deuteronomy. Presumably that is what was lost.

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

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.

The jobs don't get married. The people get married.

Fool you once, you are forgiven. Fool you twice, you're just a fool.

What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.

Wisdom's daughter walks alone, The mark of Athena burns through Rome.

Pursue not the outer entanglements; Dwell not in the inner void; Be serene in the oneness of things; And dualism vanishes by itself.

Well, there are certainly original things to say. But I'm not sure that a pop song is the appropriate format to say them in.

Stop thinking and start looking.

Humility, which is a virtue, is always fruitful in good works.