Daniel

Daniel was a presbyter (priest) known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium (d. c. 450), to whom Isidore addressed at least eight surviving letters from the Pelusium milieu of the eastern Nile Delta in early-to-mid 5th-century Egypt. The letters are predominantly exegetical and pastoral: Isidore answers Daniel's questions about Scripture (the meaning of "the fathers ate sour grapes" in Ezekiel 18, the beatitude on those reproached for Christ's sake, and the distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven), and counsels him on the ethics of forgiveness, bearing insults with philosophical meekness, and not corrupting favors by repaying them in unjust matters. One pair of letters shares with him news and grief over the death of a virtuous fellow presbyter, Eustathius, suggesting Daniel moved in the same clerical circle. Nothing further about him is independently attested; the address "presbyter" and the tenor of Isidore's instruction are the whole of the record.