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. Along with Robert Alter and Adele Berlin, Sternberg is one of the most prominent practitioners of a literary approach to the Bible.[1]

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 (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, with its emphasis on the effects of the literary texts on readers, can be seen as part of Reader-response criticism.[2][3]

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.[4][5][6] He believes the Bible is written by an omniscient narrator, who has had things revealed to him by an omniscient 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.[7] 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."[8]

Sternberg was the editor of the academic journal Poetics Today from 1994 to 2016. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1996, for his contributions to literary theory.

References

  1. ^ Crenshaw, James L. (2004). "Foreword". The Psalms In Israel's Worship. Eerdmans. p. xxx. ISBN 9780802828163.
  2. ^ Ann, Moor (1979). Untitled. p. 426-428. JSTOR 1770307.
  3. ^ Bleich, David; L. Sammons, Jeffrey; Watson, George; Black, Edwin; Empson, William; Norris, C. C.; Watkins, Evan (1980). Untitled. p. 237-244. JSTOR 514193.
  4. ^ Berlin, Adele (2008). "Literary approaches to biblical literature". The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press. p. 54. ISBN 9780814731888. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
  5. ^ Freedman, Amelia Devin (2005). God as an Absent Character in Biblical Hebrew Narrative. Peter Lang. p. 17. ISBN 9780820478289. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
  6. ^ R. Christopher Heard, "Narrative Criticism and the Hebrew Scriptures," Restoration Quarterly 38.1 (1996), 33.
  7. ^ J. Daniel Hays, "An Evangelical Approach to Old Testament Narrative Criticism," Bibliotheca Sacra 166 (2009), 7.
  8. ^ Staley, Jeffrey (2002). Reading with a Passion: Rhetoric, Autobiography, and the American West in the Gospel of John. A&C Black. p. 31. ISBN 9780826414328. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
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