The Daniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel and the Hero of the Book of Daniel

Abstract

In his recent article, The identification of the Ugaritic Dnil with the Daniel of Ezekiel, VT 29 (1979), pp. 152-61, H. H. P. Dressler has questioned the common identification of the Daniel (Dn'il) of the Ugaritic Aqhat epic (CTA 17-19) with the righteous and wise Daniel of Ezek. xiv 14, 20, xxviii 3 1); also, without categorically asserting the identity of the Ezekielian Daniel with the hero of the book of Daniel, he nevertheless rejects the arguments which have commonly been brought against this identification. It is clear that the identification of the Ugaritic Daniel with the Daniel of Ezekiel has sometimes been assumed without proper knowledge of the Ugaritic material and it is good to have the views of one who has made so thorough a study of the Aqhat text as Dressler 2). I shall argue, however, that the evidence still favours the probability that Ezekiel is referring to the same figure as is alluded to in the Aqhat epic, though this is not to assert that he knew that very text. I shall also argue that, though Dressler's view that the Ezekielian Daniel could well be a contem-

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.