Dan'el

[benjaburns]

In the "Proof that the Christian God doesn't exist" thread, Crunk Bishop said this:

 

yeah, i agree Daniel is an outright forgery and not the best basis for arguing theology... based on a legendary Canaanite figure named Dan'el.

 

Is this true? Who was Dan'el and how is the book of Daniel based on him?

[Warrior_of_god]

The only thing I was able to find so far is that Dan'el was a Canaanite hero who was a prominent figure in the Ugaritic epics... whatever the Ugaritic epics are/were...

 

EDIT: The Urgaritic Epics were tales of people written by people from the city of Ugarit. Apparently the Ugaritians and the Cannonites were very similar, even down to their religious practices. They both worshoped Ba'al.

 

More:

Ezekiel 14:14, 20; 28:3 all refer to a wise man named "Dan'el", and exegetes since the second-century BCE have associated this Dan'el with the Daniel of the Bible

 

He is seen as being semi-divine and "he has no son but faithfully sacrifices to the deities, and is rewarded with a son Aqhat by his wife Danatiya through Baal's intercession. He gives special weaponry, a bow and darts, to his son, but the goddess Anat covets it and conspires with Yatpan and the vultures to kill Aqhat for it when the latter refuses her offer of eternal life as payment. Dan'el grieves and his daughter Paghat takes steps to avenge the deed."

 

Dan'el is also mentioned in the Ugaritic list of rulers. He is also mentioned with Noah and Job.

 

Also "an early "Dan'el" figure also appears in connection with the tradition of the "watchers" who came down ("fell") from heaven and wrought all sorts of mischief among human women and men. The Enochic Book of the Watchers 6.7 has a Dan'el among the leaders of this group."

 

"In the book of Jubilees, which otherwise has strong connections to the Enochic materials, a human "Dan'el" is named as an uncle, and father-in-law, to Enoch himself (father of Enoch's wife Edna; see Jubilees 4.20)"

 

He was called "Dan'el the Rapha-man" in the Ugaritic text, which has led to the conjecture that perhaps he is connected to the legendary "tall" "Rephaim" of Deut 2.11 and 20."

 

These all could be refferences to the same man or seperate tales that Chriatianity took bits from to construct the Biblical Daniel.

 

REF: Source

[Crunk Bishop]

yep, warrior's got the facts! The Ugaritic epics are the mythological stories of the Canaanites, whose capital was called "Ugarit" before it was destroyed by "the Sea People" c. 1200 BCE and later occupied by the Israelites.

 

The author of "Daniel" is using the Babylonian Exile as a metaphor to motivate the "exiled" true Jewish believers during the religious persecutions of Antiochus IV (c. 170 BCE) and using a name every one would identify with a mythological wise man for his protagonist. The book is really raving and apocalyptic.

 

 

surprisingly, wikipedia has a good article about the historical inaccuracies within the book of Daniel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Daniel

 

This article is also good, but goes to great lengths spliting hairs to say that Daniel is not a "forgery." Maybe "historical fiction" is a better genre!!

 

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DAH_DEM/DANIEL_BOOK.html