Abstract

From the comparison established with the Paleo-African literature and the new pragmatic paradigms on the literary studies of the ancient Near East, a possible way of reading the ''bridging text'' that appears in the Torah or Pentateuch of the Story of Joseph is opened as a ''rite of passage'' identifying the ''act'' of the materiality of writing with migration and the ''artifact'' of the text with the land. The strategic frontier position that the narrative had in the final writing acquires its own function when it allows us to understand that the ambiguities present in the story are there to achieve the incorporation of the readers into the text. This also proves the effectiveness of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that, through the Protosinaitic, remain active and operative in the Hebrew Bible allowing the reader to take ''the step'' and enter into ''the land'' of the text, to constitute himself as an individual, instead of fragmenting into various models that depend on external social approvals.

Keywords materiality; writing; identity; intentionality; text