05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 13/11/12 11:40 Pagina 409 409 NOAH, DEUCALION, AND THE NEW TESTAMENT be enough to bring God to deliver Jerusalem. If the theory that the three righteous men here are taken to be non-Israelites from ancient times be correct, this passage from Ezekiel shows why a faithful Jew might willingly find connections between the biblical story of Noah and Gentile stories of a flood and its pious survivor 15. I have already mentioned a number of features in the Genesis flood story, such as the rain, and the destruction of all or most of humankind. Further, the LXX version of that story uses the verb and cog- nates to describe the corruption of humankind and God’s response of corrupting or destroying the earth (e.g., Gen 6,11-17); the Greek sto- Because of space considerations I must be brief on this point. The ketiv 15 (written in the Hebrew text) at Ezek 14,14.20; 28,3 has the consonants dn’l, while the qere (to be read aloud) has the consonants dny’l (to which the vow- els correspond: danîyē’l, the normal spelling of “Daniel”). Many students of Ezekiel suppose that the prophet meant someone named Dan’el, an ancient and non-Israelite figure to go along with Noah and Job: see, for example, J.W. WEVERS, Ezekiel (New Century Bible; Grand Rapids, MI 1969) 115; W. ZIMMERLI, Ezekiel (Hermeneia; Philadelphia, PA 1979) I, 314-315; M. GREEN- BERG, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB; New York 1983) 257-258; and the very traditional Y. MOSKOVITZ, Sefer Yehezqel (Da‘at Miqra’; Jerusalem 1985) 82 . The person called Dan’il, found in the Ugaritic story of Aqhat, seems to fit the bill; he is one who “defended the rights of the widow, judged the case of the orphan” (Aqhat 17, v, 7-8; cf. Prov 31,9; Isa 1,17; Keret 16, vi, 33-34). The strongest argument against that identification is the disbelief that Ezekiel would commend “an idolatrous Baal-devotee”, as discussed in H.H.P. DRESS- LER, “The identification of the Ugaritic Dnil with the Daniel of Ezekiel”, VT 29 (1979) 152-161, and “Reading and interpreting the Aqht text”, VT 34 (1984) 78-82; see also D. BLOCK, Ezekiel 1–24 (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI 1997) 447-449. DRESSLER would have us take this Daniel as the hero of the biblical book Daniel, “a wise and righteous contemporary” of Ezekiel. Strong arguments for the other side come from J. DAY, “The Daniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel and the hero of the book of Daniel”, VT 30 (1980) 174-184, and B. MARGALIT, “Interpreting the story of Aqht”, VT 30 (1980) 361-365. Dressler’s position would require the biblical Daniel to be well known to Ezekiel’s au- dience as an exemplar of righteousness; and even on the traditionalist view of Daniel, there is scant evidence for this. Further, the mention of Dan’el in connection with Tyre (Ezek 28,3) seems again to support the Gentile inter- pretation. Perhaps, as well, Ezekiel knew the Dan’il of the Aqhat story from other sources besides the specific tale found at Ugarit. Further, there is prece- dent in Gen 14,22 for the LORD accepting the title of a deity worshiped by pious-but-benighted Gentiles; and this is plausible, when we realize that the Ugaritic tale of Aqhat does not recount that he practiced any of the deeds a prophet would find abhorrent.