Meir Sternberg (; born October 3, 1944) 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) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

. Along with

Robert Alter Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor emeritus of Hebrew language, Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has published two dozen books, including an aw ...

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.

Work

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 Johns Hopkins University Press (also referred to as JHU Press or JHUP) is the publishing division of Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and is the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The press publi ...

(1978) and later in

Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes ...

(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. The term is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretica ...

, 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 property of possessing maximal knowledge. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, it is often attributed to a divine being or an all-knowing spirit, entity or person. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any ...

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 The Israel Prize (; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History Prior to the Israel Prize, the most significant award in the arts was the Dizengoff Prize and in Israel ...

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 Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Academic journal editors 1944 births