La "Abominación" de la Mesa: Pureza Ritual, Orden Cósmico y la Paradoja de José en Egipto

La "Abominación" de la Mesa: Pureza Ritual, Orden Cósmico y la Paradoja de José en Egipto

This study examines the anthropological and cosmological dimensions of the dietary segregation described in the Joseph narrative of Genesis. It argues that the Egyptian refusal to share table fellowship with the Hebrews reflects patterns of ritual boundary maintenance grounded in the conceptual polarity between Maat and Isfet, rather than categories analogous to modern racial prejudice.

Through a semantic comparison between the Hebrew term toʿevah and the Egyptian concept of bwt, the analysis suggests that such exclusion operated within a framework of cosmologically structured purity in which pastoral mobility and foreignness were associated with symbolic disorder.

Employing a double-temporality model, the study proposes that the final redaction of the narrative may incorporate elements of Late Period Egyptian cultural memory, including heightened concerns over ethnic and ritual boundaries. Joseph’s integration into the Heliopolitan priestly elite through his marriage to the daughter of a priest of On is interpreted as conferring elevated ritual status, thereby intensifying the narrative tension between inclusion and exclusion.

The episode ultimately presents a literary reversal in which the stability of the Egyptian purity system is preserved through the agency of the very group it designates as ritually problematic.