Daniel 11

The writer doesn’t say who is talking to Daniel, in a conversation that started in Daniel 10. But the speaker fits the description of a “glowing” celestial being (see note for Daniel 10:6).

King Darius the Mede hasn’t shown up in history outside the Bible. And on the timeline of most scholars, it seems, there’s no room for him. The Book of Daniel says he was the king of Babylon after Belshazzar but before Cyrus the Great. Yet ancient documents say Cyrus took over when his army invaded, and Belshazzar was executed.

Some students of the Bible say most of this chapter is about the future and about a ruler called the Antichrist. But there’s no one called that in the Bible. Four short Bible verses describe people who reject Jesus as “antichrist” (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7). And it says they are “already here, crawling all over the place” (1 John 2:18). The idea of a world leader called the Antichrist seemed to develop in the Middle Ages, especially approaching the turn of AD 1000, with the fear of what might be coming. French Queen Gerbera (about 939-954) asked a monk named Adso to explain what the world could expect of the mysterious Antichrist. He pieced together descriptions of mysterious evil men of the Bible to form a portrait of one man who became known as the Antichrist—fiction to some Christians, future to others. It’s a debatable mystery.

Cyrus the Great was the first Persian king of this dynasty, known as Achaemenid (about 559-334 BC). Kings after Cyrus: Cambyses II (son of Cyrus), Bardiya (another son of Cyrus or an imposter), Darius the Great, and Xerxes the Great.

There’s wide agreement among Bible scholars that this ruler was Xerxes, famous for invading Greece and defeating Spartans in a narrow seaside passage at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. That battle inspired the blockbuster film, “300.” Daniel 11 tracks remarkably with history from Daniel’s time in the 500s BC until the 100s BC. Scholars say someone wrote this history and sold it as prophecy or Daniel was unusually specific and forward-thinking for a prophet. A lot of the prophecy in the Bible reads more like a sermon, a message from God about life in the time of the prophet and the near future. Reading Daniel might seem more like watching history play out in a crystal ball. Most Christians seem to agree that prophets did get messages from God about the future. But this chapter is rare.

The continuing flow of the story suggests this soldier was Alexander the Great. His Greek empire swallowed up what are now parts of Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa. When he died in 323 BC at age 32, four of his generals divided the kingdom. See “kingdom…breaks into four pieces” (Daniel 11:4).

Alexander the Great’s empire split four ways, divided among four generals: Ptolemy ruled Egypt, Seleucus ruled Persia, Antigonus ruled what now includes Turkey (called Asia Minor), and Cassander ruled northern Greece (called Macedon). The two strongest kingdoms belonged to Ptolemy and Seleucus.

Ptolemy ruled the southern tip of Alexander the Great’s former empire. He allied himself with Seleucus and defeated the Turkey-based general Antigonus. Seleucus added that northern land to his eastern kingdom, becoming the largest part of Alexander’s former empire.

Israel lay between the Ptolemy’s Egypt and the empire of Seleucus. The two kingdoms fought for control of Israel, the best land bridge between northern nations and Africa. Half a century later, around 250 BC, Ptolemy II tried to heal the rift. He married his daughter Berenice to Antiochus II. But Antiochus first had to divorce his wife Laodice and ban her sons from succeeding him, which he did. It’s complicated. It got worse. Two years later, Antiochus reconnected with his ex. She killed him. Then she had her supporters murder Berenice and her sons, along with the Egyptian servants Berenice had brought north with her. Berenice’s father died in Egypt that same year. This quickly uncomplicated things for Laodice, until she met Berenice’s brother, Ptolemy III. He avenged his sister by killing Laodice.

Ptolemy III, the brother of Berenice, avenged his sister by attacking and defeating the Seleucid empire, and by killing Laodice in 244 BC.

The two empires didn’t fight again for two years. But in 242 BC, the northern kingdom wanted to get even. But they got decimated. Their invasion failed and they retreated with a smaller army.

Greek historian Polybius reported that the northern king, Antiochus III, invaded Egypt with 62,000 soldiers, 6,000 cavalry, and 102 elephants. He pushed through what is now Lebanon, Israel, and Palestinian Territory, reaching all the way to Egypt’s fortress at Raphia on the northern border. Ptolemy rushed to defend Egypt with 70,000 soldiers, 5,000 cavalry, and 73 elephants.

Soldiers of Egypt’s King Ptolemy IV (221-203 BC) killed a fourth of the invading army—4,000 soldiers. But he didn’t finish the job of killing them all or of forcing a peace treaty.

Antiochus III (the Great) continued capturing Egyptian-controlled territory, including what is now Israel, Palestinian Territory, Lebanon—even land as far north as Greece.

In 193 BC, Antiochus’s 11-year-old daughter, the first Cleopatra (not THE Cleopatra), married the 17-year-old King Ptolemy V of Egypt.

It turned out that Antiochus’s 11-year-old daughter, Egypt’s first Cleopatra, loved her 17-year-old Egyptian husband. And that’s where she invested her trust. Daddy misjudged that.

Antiochus launched a four-year war with the Roman Republic, fighting in Greece in the fall of 192 BC. Romans beat him at the Battle of Magnesia. He retreated and went home.

Antiochus returned home. Later, someone murdered him in the town of Susa (Iran) in 187 BC, while he was stealing money from a temple devoted to his own god, Bel. He wanted the money to pay the tribute taxes Rome charged him for starting the war with them.

This king, many scholars agree, was Seleucus IV (reigned 187-175 BC). He had the burden of paying Romans the tribute taxes levied on them after his dad challenged Rome to war and lost. He sent his chief financial officer Heliodorus on a fund-raising campaign. He tried to clean out the treasury of the Jerusalem Temple, but apparently saw a terrifying vision of a horseback rider inside the Temple. He left town after offering a sacrifice to God, according to 2 Maccabees 3, a book preserved in some Christian Bibles. A Greek historian from the AD 100s, Appian, said Heliodorus orchestrated Seleucus’s assassination—with help from the king’s little brother, Antiochus.

This reads like an insult.

Antiochus made an alliance with the influential family of Tobiad, who agreed to set up a Greek-style community in Jerusalem.

Antiochus stole from the Jerusalem Temple treasury. He probably rationalized that he was simply taking the tribute taxes due him as master of the Jewish territory.

Antiochus’s army defeated Egyptians in 170 BC, captured Egypt’s northern border town of Pelusium, and arrested the Egyptian king’s nephew Ptolemy VI.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem with pagan sacrifices to Zeus. Jewish rebel fighters led by Judas Maccabaeus drove out the invaders and won their independence. Jewish priests ritually cleansed the Temple in eight days in December 167 BC. Jews later came to celebrate this with an eight-day religious holiday known as Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.

Zeus was the top god of the Greeks. Antiochus IV claimed he was the human incarnation of Zeus.

Women looked for help from Zeus and many other gods including: Athena and Aphrodite, Demeter, Hera. But some scholars say it’s possible the writer was referring to the gods of Egypt by speaking of Egypt as “women,” weaker than men. Either way, the point is that this king ranked himself in glory above those gods.

This sounds like Antiochus died here, in 168 BC. He did not. Historians from Bible times report that he died about four years later, in 164 BC, in what is now Iran. Yet the tide turned for him in 168 BC, when a Roman ambassador named Gaius Popillius Laenas humiliated him in public by drawing a circle around him and ordering him not to leave the circle until he agreed to leave Egypt. This took place somewhere between Jerusalem and Alexandria, Egypt—and the deep blue sea.