Dan (Hebrew: דָּן, Standard Dan Tiberian Dān; "Judge") was, according to the Book of Genesis, a son of Jacob and Bilhah (the first son of Bilhah, but the fifth son of Jacob), and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Dan[1]; however some biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation[2]; in the biblical account, Dan's mother is only a handmaid, rather than a wife of Jacob, which scholars see as indicating that the authors saw the tribe of Dan as being not of entirely Israelite origin[3]. The tribe of Dan is suspected by some biblical scholars to have evolved from the Denyen,
one of the groups of Sea Peoples, the name Dan being a corruption of Denyen[4]; the Song of Deborah, for example, which is regarded by textual scholars as among the most ancient parts of the Bible[5], describes the tribe as still residing in ships.
The text of the Torah argues that the name of Dan derives from dananni, meaning he has judged me, in reference to Rachel's belief that she had gained a child as the result of a judgement from God[6]. Apart from the view among modern scholars that the name Dan originates from Denyen, a number of scholars have suggested that, like Gad deriving from Gad and Asher deriving from Assur, Dan derives from the name of a deity that was originally worshipped by the tribe[3]; according to this view, the name Daniel is interpreted as meaning Dan is El, rather than meaning El is my judge or God is my judge[7].
Owing to the Book of Judges, in the account of Micah's Idol, describing the tribe of Dan as having used ephod and teraphim in worship, and Samson (a member of the tribe of Dan) being described as failing to adhere to the rules of a Nazirate, classical rabbinical writers concluded that Dan was very much a black sheep[3]; in the Book of Jeremiah, the north of Canaan is associated with darkness and evil[8], and so rabbinical sources treated Dan as the archetype of wickedness[3]. In the apocryphal Testaments of the Patriarchs, Dan is portrayed as having hated Joseph, and having been the one that invented the idea of deceiving Jacob by the smearing of Joseph's coat with the blood of a kid[9][10][11]; in the apocryphal Prayer of Asenath, Dan is portrayed as plotting with the Egyptian crown prince, against Joseph and Asenath[3]. In the Blessing of Jacob, Dan is described as a serpent, which seems to have been interpreted as connecting Dan to Belial[3], a connection made, for example, in the apocryphal Testament of Dan[12]; early Christian writers, such as Irenaeus and Hippolytus, even believed that the Antichrist would come from the tribe of Dan[13][14], drawing the belief from a verse from the Book of Jeremiah which states the snorting of [the enemy's] horses was heard from Dan[15][3]. It is worth to mention that John the apostle omits the tribe of Dan when mentioning the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel, in regard to the 144000 sealed saints. (Rev:7:5-8) Perhaps this is a testimmony of the unworthiness of Dan. Instead of Dan, the tribe of Joseph appears twice.
