Will stand up or stood against?
In the Old Greek version of Daniel, at 11:2, it literally says:
‘…three kings have stood against Persia’.
However, the Hebrew version says:
‘…three kings will arise in Persia’.
Which is correct?
The simplest explanation is that this is a simple copyist error, introduced when the Greek text was being copied by hand.
- ἈΝΑΣΤΉΣΟΝΤΑΙ (anastēsontai) means ‘will stand up’
- ΑΝΘΕΣΤΗΚΑΣΙΝ (anthestekasin) means ‘have stood against’
It’s more likely to be a Greek copyist error than some error in copying the Hebrew, because the Hebrew words with those meanings are very different from each other (‘o·me·dim vs ‘a·mad) and are unlikely to be confused, whereas the Greek words are quite similar visually and audibly.
We fix this likely scribal error in our translation, so the Old Greek version now says the same as the Hebrew, that three kings will arise in Persia.
Historically, the three kings were indeed Persian kings who were going to rise in the future, because Daniel was writing this in the 1st year of Cyrus (539 BC), and the three kings are generally considered to be Cambyses II, Bardiya/Smerdis, and Darius I. The first one didn’t take the throne until 530 BC, nine years after Daniel recorded this; so yes, the three kings ‘will stand up’.