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Danel
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Danel was a culture hero who appears in an incomplete Ugaritic text of the fourteenth century BCE at Ras Shamra, where the name is rendered DNL, "El is judge". His name is invoked as the example of a righteous judge almost a millennium later in the Book of Ezekiel and borne by the prophet Daniel.
Danel
The text (Corpus Tablettes Alphabetiques [CTA] 17–19) is often referred to as the Epic of Aqhat.
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Danel was a culture hero who appears in an incomplete Ugaritic text of the fourteenth century BCE at Ras Shamra, where the name is rendered DNL, "El is judge". His name is invoked as the example of a righteous judge almost a millennium later in the Book of Ezekiel and borne by the prophet Daniel.
Danel
The text (Corpus Tablettes Alphabetiques [CTA] 17–19) is often referred to as the Epic of Aqhat. Danel was depicted as "judging the cause of the widow, adjudicating the case of the fatherless" in the city gate (Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 149–51.) He passed through trials: his son Aqhat was destroyed but apparently in the missing conclusion was revived or replaced by Danel's patron god, Rp'u, who sits and judges with Hadad and Astarte and is clearly identical to El. "This is significant," John Day remarked "since the Old Testament identifies El with Yahweh and did not have the scruples about so doing which it had with Baal."
The three tablets bearing the story of Danel in about 400 lines break off before the story is completed. Danel, a leader, has no son and engages in an incubation rite; on the seventh day Baal induces the other deities to intercede with El, who takes pity, blesses Danel and grants him a son, Aqhat. Aqhat is presented with a bow by the craftsman deity Kothar-wa-Khasis?. The goddess Anat desires the bow and makes several tries unsuccessfully to obtain it, offering even immortality; Aqhat calls her offer spurious, since old age and death are man's common lot. Anat with the consent of El, launches her attendant in the form of a hawk to steal back the bow; however, in the event, the bow is broken and lost in the sea, and Aqhat dies. The bloodshed brings drought to the land and mourning. Aqhat's sister Pagat seeks vengeance, but discovers that the killer she has contracted is the very murderer of her brother. Here the narrative is interrupted. It is generally surmised that in the missing ending, with the help of Danel's patron god Aqhat's remains are recovered from the eagle that has devoured them.
The text was published and translated in 1936 by Charles Virolleaud and has been extensively analysed since then.
Danel and the Daniel of Ezekiel
Parallels and contrasts with the righteous and wise Daniel of the Book of Ezekiel, placed between Noah and Job and invoked as the very example of righteous judgement, first pointed out by René Dussaud in 1931, have led readers commonly to accept or occasionally to reject a degree of identification with Ugaritic Danel of the "Aqhat text", amounting virtually to the same figure. The three figures referred to in Ezekiel xiv, 14 — "Even if Noah, Daniel and Job were in it..." — links the name with two non-Israelites of great antiquity. In Ezekiel xxviii.3, Daniel is one noted for his wisdom in the prophecy addressed to the king of Tyre: "you are indeed wiser than Daniel, no secret is hidden from you". The name, "Danel", had a long tradition in Hebrew culture: he is supplied as the father-in-law of Enoch in Jubilees.
Recent uses
The name Danel has been given to one of the craters on Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter.
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