OG Daniel 11:24 — Strongholds and Plans
There are two discrepancies between the Old Greek and the Hebrew here. Are they caused by the Old Greek being more authentic, or is there some other explanation?
These do not look like more original text here, but errors.
It seems that one is caused by either a simple misreading of the Hebrew by our Greek translator, or our Greek translator friend working from a damaged Hebrew scroll (the latter more likely).
The Old Greek says that the king will:
‘plot against the strong city’
But the Hebrew says he’ll:
‘plot against the strongholds’.
While this could be due to an interpretative translation of our Greek translator, a simpler explanation is that mivsarim (strongholds/fortified cities) got confused with mivsar (stronghold/fortified city). Either the translator misread it, or he was using a damaged scroll or a scroll with copyist errors that missed off the tiny plural ending (ים). We’ve seen a few differences in the Old Greek of Daniel 11 that could be due to a damaged/poorly coppied manuscript, so this is not surprising.
As for what happened historically, we assume that this is talking about something in addition to Antiochus IV’s attack on JeruSalem (referred to previously in the verse), but before his invasion of Egypt (which happens in the next verse).
That’s a very short period of time! We’re talking a year at most (both events may have happened around 169 BC).
If there was any particular ‘strong city’ that he plotted against during that brief time, it’s not recorded in history. He was, however, quite famously plotting his upcoming invasion of Egypt.
So our best educated guess is this is a misreading of the Hebrew or working from a damaged scroll.
After this, the Old Greek ends the verse by saying that:
‘his plans will come to nothing.’
But the Hebrew says:
‘but only for a time.’
There’s no obvious possible misreading/mistranslating of the Hebrew, or miscopying of the Greek. So this change is either an interpretative translation, or the Hebrew manuscript said an entirely different thing. Which is it?
It seems more likely to be the translator is translating naturally and faithfully, but misled by the damaged scroll he was working on. Remember, he’s probably working from a damaged manuscript that said the king has plotted against a ‘strong city’ instead of ‘strongholds’.
If our Greek translator friend knew this was talking about Antiochus IV, when he read that the king was planning to attack some ‘strong city’ before his famous invasion of Egypt, he would have known full well that no such thing ever happened. So when he reads the Hebrew saying ‘but only for a time’, he could have naturally interpreted it as meaning that those plans simply ended with no action taken, because that’s how things played out.
Therefore, his translation (‘his plans will come to nothing’) follows naturally. It’s not his fault that he was working from a damaged manuscript. It shows how one mistake in a manuscript (or translation) can have knock-on effects to nearby clauses, as a lot of translation relies on context.
For these reasons, we fix the text with [translator insertions] and link it to this translator note.
A dating clue?
Could this be a clue as to when the Old Greek was translated? Yes! If our translator knew this was talking about King Antiochus IV, then that would place the translation sometime after 169 BC, the year Antiochus IV invaded Egypt. This would match with scholar’s estimates for the translation being made around 150-100 BC.