Meir Sternberg is an Israeli literary critic and biblical scholar. He is Artzt Professor of Poetics and Comparative Literature at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

. Along with Robert Alter and

Adele Berlin Adele Berlin (born May 23, 1943 in Philadelphia) is an American biblical scholar and Hebraist. Before her retirement, she was Robert H. Smith Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Maryland. Berlin is best known for 1994 work ''Poet ...

, Sternberg is one of the most prominent practitioners of a literary approach to the Bible. Sternberg made an important contribution to narrative theory in his book ''Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction'', first published in Johns Hopkins University Press (1978) and later in Indiana University Press (1993). In his book Sternberg systematically explores how the order of information offered by the literary text creates for readers effects such as curiosity, suspense and surprise by analyzing examples that range from Homer's Odyssey to selected modern novels. Sternberg's contribution in this book to

Narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...

, with its emphasis on the effects of the literary texts on readers, can be seen as part of

Reader-response criticism Reader-response criticism is a School of thought, school of literary theory that focuses on Reading (process), the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primar ...

. Sternberg is best known for his 1985 book ''The Poetics of Biblical Narrative''. Sternberg argues that the Bible is a "foolproof composition": any reader who reads the Bible in "good faith" will get the point of what is written. He believes the Bible is written by an

omniscient narrator Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...

, who has had things revealed to him by an

omniscient Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...

God. Sternberg also makes much of "gaps" in narration, in which the narrator withholds truth in order to generate ambiguity. Finally, he argues that the biblical authors were concerned with three central elements in their narratives: aesthetics, history, and ideology. Jeffrey Staley suggests that, along with Robert Alter, Adele Berlin, and Shimon Bar-Efrat, Sternberg is a master of "leading the reader through the sudden twists and sharp turns, the steep ridges and dizzying drop-offs that make up the art of ancient Hebrew characterization." Sternberg was the editor of the academic journal ''

Poetics Today ''Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of poetics. The editors-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chi ...

'' from 1994 to 2016. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1996, for his contributions to literary theory.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sternberg, Meir Living people Israel Prize in literature recipients Israeli literary critics Israeli biblical scholars Old Testament scholars Tel Aviv University faculty Academic journal editors 1944 births