former Unitarian pastor, Ralph Waldo Emerson assimilates Pro-East Antiquity to a corpus of texts (the biblical canon); for him, she was part of a hermeneutic survey, which was inextricably linked to a thorough reflection on the nature and challenges of writing and reading. Inherited from Christian theology, this approach is based on assumptions that have become problematic at a time when advances in philology shed an innovative light on the history of writing, particularly thanks to the discovery of Champollion, which makes it possible to decipher hierglyphic registrations. Traditionally, the biblical exegesis has hitherto been the task of developing correct interpretations and tracing the exact meaning of texts the letter of which often seems ambiguous and confusing; the speech known as Divinity School Address is Emerson’s main contribution to this debate. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, progress in pro- and eastern philology poses problems of another kind: what does “read” mean, let alone read it “correctly”? What precautions should be taken to ensure its minimum readability even before the question of “fair” interpretation arises? This test attempts to examine some of the tensions resulting from this new situation. The aim is to show how they influence Emerson’s thinking on the semiotic nature of language, complicate his relationship with contemporary thinking and determine the attitude it takes towards his own writing, in a way that, from the point of view of the 21st century, remains very topical.