<P> The historicity of the Joseph narrative cannot be demonstrated . Hermann Gunkel, Hugo Gressmann and Gerhard von Rad identified the story of Joseph as a literary composition, in the genre of romance, or the novella . As a novella, it is read as reworking legends and myths, in particular the motifs of his reburial in Canaan, associated with the Egyptian god Osiris . Others compare the burial of his bones at Shechem, with the disposal of Dionysus's bones at Delphi . For Schenke, the tradition of Joseph's burial at Shechem is understood as a secondary, Israelitic historical interpretation woven around a more ancient Canaanite shrine in that area . The reworked legends and folklore were probably inserted into the developing textual tradition of the Bible between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE . Most scholars place its composition in a genre that flourished in the Persian period of the Exile . </P> <P> Jewish rabbi and scholar Benjamin Scolnic observes that scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen and James K. Hoffmeier have refuted the" naming conventions" argument used by those who argue against Joseph's historicity on the basis that they contend that the names of the biblical characters in Joseph's story do not reflect the Egyptian milieu of the 2nd millennium BCE . </P> <P> See also: Torah portions on Joseph: Vayeshev, Miketz, Vayigash, and Vayechi </P> <P> In the midrash, the selling of Joseph was part of God's divine plan for him to save his tribes . The favoritism Israel showed Joseph and the plot against him by his brothers were divine means of getting him into Egypt . Maimonides comments that even the villager in Shechem, about whom Joseph inquired his brother's whereabouts, was a "divine messenger" working behind the scene . </P>

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