I noticed in recent reading of Ezekiel that Daniel is mentioned several times, and as a sort of titan of faith. What’s interesting about this is that Ezekiel predates Daniel, but that the references don’t seem to be prophecy. Instead, they’re almost historical.

While there’s a bit of debate about who this mentioned Daniel is, the theory I like the best is that Daniel was more of a title/almost archetypal reference, like when we say someone was a real Paul Bunyan of a man, for example. What I find appealing about this reading is that it then makes some increasing sense of the Book of Daniel and some of the dueterocanonical books: the collection of stories that mention Daniel aren’t necessarily all of the same character, but are more tellings of some small group of people who acted in particularly faithful ways.