OG Daniel 11:30 — ‘Ships of Kittim’ or ‘Romans’?
The Old Greek version of 11:30 says:
‘The Romans will come and they’ll drive him back’
But the Hebrew says:
‘Ships from Chittim (or Kittim) will come against him’.
Could the original words of Daniel have included the name ‘Romans’? Well, at the time of writing, Rome was still an unknown tiny Italian city state. We could, perhaps, have a situation like when Cyrus was named as the conqueror years before he was born, but we would then have to explain why ‘Romans’ was removed from the Hebrew version of Daniel.
Also, there may be a simpler, less sensational explanation. Since we’re dealing with a translation, it’s also possible that the translator (or later copyists) simply clarified the text for the Greek-speaking audience.
The Old Greek text is certainly historically correct here, as it refers to the arrival of the Roman envoy Gaius Popillius Laenas in 168 BC. He famously drew a circle around king Antiochus IV and demanded he withdraw his forces from Egypt (an event known as the Day of Eleusis).
So yes, it really was the ‘Romans’ who came against Antiochus IV.
If the translator (or a later copyist) had inserted ‘Romans’ here to clarify the text, was that a bad thing?
Well, ships of Chittim (or Kittim) has an interesting change in meaning in Hebrew… Originally it referred to the city of Kition on Cyprus, then it came to mean the whole island, but by the 6th century BC, it had come to mean all islands and coastal regions to the west. Eventually, it became shorthand for all political powers from the west, first the Macedonians/Greeks, and finally, the Romans.
So the translator (or later copyists) were not necessarily corrupting the text here, they were simply swapping out an old idiom for plain speaking — using terms their audience would understand. In that sense, it was a faithful translation. When people used to say ‘Kittim’ to mean Western powers, they now said ‘Romans’. One could argue that the language was just updated to (what was then) modern speech.
However, they failed to maintain the same ambiguity present in the original.
Instead of saying ‘Romans’ they could have said something like ‘powers to the west’ or something like that. Their choice was too specific, making it sound like the book of Daniel specifically named Rome as a world power, when it may not have done so.
Sure, the prophecies in Daniel definitely foretold the Roman Empire (the legs of iron in chapter 2, the fourth beast in chapter 7, etc.), but did it go so far as naming it, which was then later removed from the Hebrew version for some reason? Perhaps, but perhaps not.