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
Nazarite, classical rabbinical writers concluded that Dan was very much a
black sheep. In the
Book of Jeremiah, the north of
Canaan is associated with darkness and evil, and so rabbinical sources treated Dan as the
archetype of wickedness. In the apocryphal
Prayer of Asenath, Dan is portrayed as plotting with the
Egyptian crown prince, against Joseph and
Asenath. Early Christian writers, such as
Irenaeus and
Hippolytus, even believed that the
Antichrist would come from the Tribe of Dan.
John the Apostle omits the Tribe of Dan when mentioning the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel, in regard to the
144,000 sealed Israelites. Instead of Dan, the tribe of Joseph appears twice (being also represented by
Manasseh). ==References==