DANEL (Dân'el). — An oriental figure, mentioned in Ex. 14:14–20, to demonstrate the inexorability of God’s judgment against an unfaithful land despite the hypothetical presence of Noah, D., and Job, that is, of the greatest righteous men (and therefore intercessors) of the earth; then in Ez. 28:3, to measure the claimed divine omniscience of the nāghāth (“prince”) of Tyre, Ithobaal III.
From the two passages it may be deduced that D. must have been a historical personage, the father of sons and daughters, who lived after Noé but before Job, probably in the time of the patriarchs; famous among the Phoenicians and the peoples of the Near East; not a Jew; endowed with virtues such as could not be surpassed in comparison with those of Noé and Job; and possessed of a wisdom that had become proverbial.
A very ancient Judeo-Christian tradition confused him with the prophet Daniele because of the similarity of the name (the Masoretes in Ez. 14:14–20 and 28:3 propose Dāni'ēl instead of the Dāni'ēl of the present text), of the wisdom, and because of ignorance concerning other famous D. of antiquity.
The Ugaritic legend of D. (or of Aqhat), unearthed at Rās Samrah, describes a personage named Dnl, called Mt Rpe and Gzr Mt Hrmm, in the act of administering justice: “Here is Dnl Mt - Rpe / There is Gzr Mt - Hrmm! / He rises (then) sits before the gate, / beneath the magnificent trees that are beside the threshing-floor, / and there he judges the case of the widow and establishes the right of the orphan” (I D 19b–25 a).
In II D 6, 45 the goddess 'Anat designates him: “The wisest (or wisdom) of men.” The wisdom and righteousness of this D., and his renown among the Phoenicians, led Dussaud, Albright, Viroliad, etc., to identify him with the D. of Ezechiele. C. Barton, however, brings D. close to Zabulon, the ancestor of the Zabulonites; Dhorme, to Dan, the ancestor of the Danites; H. Stocks derives the D. of Ezechiele, the figure in the canonical book of Daniele, and those of the apocryphal books of Enoch and the Gimbilei from a single tradition. The rationalists regard the prophet Daniele as a literary derivation from D., who had already become legendary in Ezechiele. The hypotheses of Barton, Dhorme, H. Stocks, and the rationalists have no solid foundation. The identification of D. with the prophet Daniele may (or must) be excluded. There are evident similarities between the D. of Ezechiele and the Ugaritic figure; however, since we do not possess a reliable version of the Ugaritic legend of D. and lack other data for verification, it does not seem prudent at present to conclude with complete certainty that the two personages are identical. Ezechiele therefore remains the only certain source concerning D.