"...a brilliant work.... Sternberg... provides perspective on the Bible's unique stance between truth and the whole truth, shows how the biblical art of indirection and gapping leads readers into a peculiar sense of being human, and develops helpful new analyses of biblical redundancy and the structure of repetition. Of special note are his extended close readings of several key episodes: the wooing of Rebekah, David and Bathsheba, Joseph and his brothers, among others."-Choice

"... an important book for those who seek to take the Bible seriously as a literary work because it shows, more clearly and emphatically than any book I know, that the Bible is a serious literary work-a text manifesting a highly sophisticated and suc-cessful narrative poetics. If anyone could demonstrate this, it is surely Sternberg, who is eminently qualified for his enterprise a major contribution to biblical studies, literary studies, and the juncture between the two. Sternberg has, through his own virtuos-ity as a reader, put biblical narrative poetics on a firm footing and has produced a masterful guide for other readers of the Bible."