Bible Translations Are Lying to You

Previous articles in this blog have shown that the Hebrew visions of Daniel (Dan 8–12) focus on the first-century destruction of the Second Temple. The vision of the horn-kingdom at Daniel 8:9–12 describes the destruction of the Second Temple, not its conversion to pagan worship. The chronology at Daniel 9:24–27 then dates that destruction to AM 3830 = 70 CE, the very year the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. The historical discourse at Daniel 11:2–45 finally identifies the final horn-kingdom with the “king” who conquers Ptolemaic Egypt. In this discourse is an unmistakable description of the War of Actium, the final war of the Roman Republic (Dan 11:40–43). The final horn-kingdom at Daniel 8:9–12 is undeniably Rome.

The purpose of this focus is polemical. The authors of these visions not only focus on the Roman destruction of the temple but also emphasize the absence of any visible divine response to this catastrophe. They are drawing an intentional contrast with the very visible divine response in Daniel 7 in order to mock it. They are mocking belief in divine salvation from within the biblical corpus itself. They are exposing your beliefs as a lie.

Yet readers of Daniel in translation may never notice these remarkable facts. And the causes of this extraordinary failure of recognition are the translations of Daniel themselves. Translations of Daniel consistently change its text through translation to favor the institutional creed that these visions address Antiochus IV and his second-century BCE war to Hellenize Judea. The Bible translations themselves lie to you.

Here are seven especially important examples of their tendentious renderings. For this purpose, we use the NRSV as a representative biblical translation.

1 — The first rendering concerns ומן האחת מהם at Daniel 8:9. The NRSV mistranslates ומן האחת מהם as “out of one of them.” A correct translation is “out of the first of them.” Here the definite article on האחת is decisive. The phrase האחת מהם identifies a member of an enumerated group, so the article signals the ordinal meaning “the first” (cf. Gen 2:11; Exod 28:17; 39:10; Ezek 10:14). This usage must not be confused with other, non-enumerative uses of האחת or האחד. Since Daniel elsewhere identifies Ptolemaic Egypt as the first of the four horns, the correct translation “out of the first of them” implies that this final horn-kingdom emerges from Ptolemaic Egypt (Dan 11:5). 

The correct reading of Daniel 8:9 therefore excludes Antiochus IV as an interpretation of its final horn. The mistranslation “out of one of them” permits this horn to emerge from the Seleucid kingdom, thereby allowing its identification with Antiochus IV.

2 — The second rendering concerns קרן אחת, also at Daniel 8:9. The NRSV mistranslates קרן אחת as “another horn.” This rendering is an explicit harmonization with Daniel 7:8 noted in the apparatus of the translation. A correct translation is “a single horn,” but this translation does not support its identification with Antiochus IV. Translators therefore avoid it.

A fundamental problem with the identification of this horn as Antiochus IV is its violation of the otherwise consistent symbol-semantics of Daniel 8–12. Throughout the Hebrew visions, horns and kings both represent specific systems of power, with individual kings referenced only as specific manifestations of those systems. Thus, identifying a horn with Antiochus IV suggests that he manifests a distinct system of power from the Seleucid kingdom. Yet Antiochus IV did not manifest a system of power distinct from the Seleucid kingdom, not even in the discourse of Daniel 11:2–45. (Note that the emergence of the Roman Empire as a new system of power through the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt does not violate this meaning of the horn symbol.) 

Even if we accept a certain multivocality in the horn symbol and accept that it signifies a specific king instead of a system of power, its description as “a single king” remains problematic. It implies that only one king emerged from the Seleucid kingdom—if this horn indeed emerges from that kingdom in the vision. Again, this implication is not historical, not even in the discourse of Daniel 11:2–45. (In fact, one must wonder why an additional horn is needed at all to represent Antiochus IV, since the Seleucid kingdom is already represented among the four horns.) In short, the reader must be told that this horn signifies Antiochus IV, because most readers would not draw this conclusion from the text alone.

3 — The third rendering concerns מצעירה, again at Daniel 8:9. The NRSV mistranslates מצעירה as “a little one.” A correct, literal translation is “without smallness.” The mem prefixed to צעירה is a privative preposition meaning “without,” a reading prompted by צעירה itself as a descriptive characteristic and condition. It is neither a location nor an action nor a thing with a presumed location, so the meaning “from” is unavailable. Both the Old Greek and Theodotion translate מצעירה as ἰσχυρὸν (“strong”), a natural smoothing of “without smallness.” The mistranslation “a little one” dismisses the prepositional force of the prefix and invents מצעירה as an otherwise unattested feminine form of מצער that is unneeded to make sense of this passage or any other biblical passage. Given that this invented noun has no independent attestation, contributes nothing to the explanation of the passage, and produces a reading contradicted by the ensuing discourse, its use here stands outside the bounds of rational translation.

An essential context for interpreting this expression is Daniel 7:8. Translations like the Old Greek and Theodotion express the Hebrew text’s intentional and direct contrast with the “little horn” of this verse. The vision of Daniel 8 opens with an explicit reference to Daniel 7, consciously inviting a comparison of the two visions (Dan 8:1). The text here therefore alludes to the “little horn” of Daniel 7:8, and it explicitly rejects any equation of that horn with the horn that emerges here. In an apparent attempt to harmonize the two horns, the NRSV translators literally reverse this contrast, expressing the exact opposite meaning of the source text. The error is also evident in the direct contradiction between “a little one” and the subsequent description of the horn as cosmically enormous (Dan 8:9–10). The mistranslation also eliminates some of the strain between this enormous horn and the historical Antiochus IV, who was not at all the most significant of Hellenistic kings.

4 — The fourth rendering concerns the phrase עד מתי החזון התמיד at Daniel 8:13. The NRSV mistranslates this phrase as “for how long is this vision concerning the regular burnt offering…”. A correct translation is “how long is this unceasing vision…”. The article on החזון (“the vision”) is decisive. The NRSV translation implies the existence of the construct chain חזון התמיד, which would mean “the vision of the regular burnt offering.” The article on החזון, however, puts the words החזון התמיד in apposition, thus giving התמיד an adjectival force: “the unceasing vision.” This point is not a mere interpretative preference: The presence of the article (and the consequent absence of a construct chain) is positive grammatical evidence against the published translation.

Like the mistranslation of מצעירה, this tendentious rendering is an attempt to harmonize Daniel 8 with Daniel 7. The point of this question is to underline the absence of a divine response to the final horn’s assault on heaven and its destruction of the Second Temple (Dan 8:9–12). The mistranslation of התמיד as “the regular burnt offering” here obscures the attention given to the unceasing prosperity of the goat. It also shifts attention away from the depicted destruction of the Second Temple—an act that Antiochus IV did not commit—to the cessation of the regular burnt offering—an act that he did.

A complete translation of עד מתי החזון התמיד והפשע שמם תת וקדש וצבא מרמס is “how long is the unceasing vision, that is, the transgression, its making a holy [people] desolate, and a ministrant host to a trampled [plot]?” The text שמם תת וקדש involves a manifest misdivision of תתו קדש. Though the meaning of the entire question is discernible, the erroneous word division, the infinitive construction שמם תתו קדש, and its atypical word order hardly make the question’s full translation obvious. The correct translation of החזון התמיד, on the other hand, is transparent.

5 — The fifth rendering is מלך יון at Daniel 8:21. The NRSV anachronistically translates מלך יון as “king of Greece.” The correct translation is “king of Ionia,” or perhaps “king of the West” in the sense of Classical antiquity. This mistranslation excludes a Roman interpretation of the final horn, since a distinction between Greeks and Romans is traditional in biblical scholarship (but not between Greeks and Macedonians).

The reading is nonetheless both eisegetical and Eurocentric. The Hebrew visions of Daniel do not make the fine ethnic distinctions between various Westerners implied in this translation. Instead, they describe all Greek-like Westerners as “Ionians” and their place of origin as “Ionia.” This usage is attested throughout Asia, including at least one case in which Romans were called “Ionians.”

6 — The sixth rendering concerns the phrase ובאפס יד ישבר at Daniel 8:25. The NRSV mistranslates ובאפס יד ישבר as “but he shall be broken, and not by human hands.” This translation identifies the final horn as the omitted subject of the verb ישבר. This subject must be determined at the discourse level, and the relevant parallel in the discourse is the fate of the High Priest at Daniel 8:11. A correct translation is therefore “and he shall be broken for a lack of power.” The translation of באפס יד as “for a lack of power” also has support in other biblical passages (cf. Job 7:6; Prov 14:28; 26:20).

Like the mistranslations in the third and fourth examples, this rendering wrongly harmonizes Daniel 8 and Daniel 7. It obscures the absence of any visible divine response to the attack of the final horn. It creates the false impression that this clause is about the final horn-king, not the High Priest as the parallel at Daniel 8:10–12 demands. Unlike the historical Antiochus IV, the final horn-king in this vision never meets an explicit, visible end.

7 — The seventh rendering concerns the verse  ויטע אהלי אפדנו בין ימים להר צבי קדש ובא עד קצו ואין עוזר לו at Daniel 11:45. The NRSV mistranslates this closing verse of the historical discourse as:

He shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the beautiful holy mountain. Yet he shall come to his end, with no one to help him. (Dan 11:45, NRSV)

The problem is the closing expression “yet he shall come to his end, with no one to help him.” This mistranslation misidentifies the antecedent of the pronominal suffix in קצו as the final king in the discourse. The actual antecedent, as determined at the discourse level, is הר צבי קדש (“the beautiful holy mountain”), a reference to the Temple Mount. A correct translation is:

He shall pitch the tents of his destruction between the seas against the beautiful holy mountain. And it shall come to its end, with no one to help it. (Dan 11:45)

This translation correctly parallels the destruction of the temple depicted in Daniel 8:9–12 and then described in Daniel 9:26–27. The mistranslation strips the verse from its context in order to imply an end to this final Western king-kingdom that Daniel 8–12 never depicts.