I said before that I'm fluctuating between different views on this passage, and the Mark Antony theory is one I figure I better make my case for.
Daniel 11:36-39 as about Mark Antony kind of perfectly lines up with Octavian’s propaganda against Antony. Describing him as acting like a King and discarding the gods of his fathers and his good Roman wife to worship strange foreign gods and even seemingly deifying himself. But The Bible’s worldview is even more strict than Rome’s about what kind of behavior only a King or God should engage in, as well as the wrongness of divorcing one woman simply because you like your new girlfriend more.
Also when you understand how the Hebrew word for “divide” used in verse 39 does not always refer to split one thing into smaller things but can rather refer to a reforming or reshaping, it fits as describing Antony’s reorganization of The Roman East.
Remembering the context that this section follows verses 32-35’s account of the rise and fall of the Hasmoneans, verses 40-41 being about the finishing off of Hasmonean independence in 37 BC seems logical. The King of the Negev (South) is Mattathais Antigonus and the King of the North is Antiochus I Theos of Commagene.
Verses 42-43 however is where this seems like the opposite of how people usually see Mark Antony’s relationship with Egypt. Here’s a reality that the common romantic fictionalizations of this time period water down, no matter how you view the personal relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, Egypt was a subject state to Rome already before she was born or her father took the throne. In reality she is a client monarch of Rome taking a side in a Roman Civil War just as much as Herod was. Acknowledging this need not affect one way or the other whatever opinion you have of Cleopatra as a person or her competence as a leader. Yet still I wish those who want to romanticize an African Queen resisting Rome would pay more attention to the Kandake of Kush who reigned during the following decades just a little further south.
Verse 44 would be about Antony’s attempt to conquer Parthia in 36 BC.
“And he shall plant the tens of his palace between the seas in the glorious Holy Mountain” in verse 45 is kind of the core of this whole theory.
I have a long history of feeling this is about the Antonia Fortress, even way back when I had a standard Futurist/Antichrist view of this passage I felt the Antonia Fortress was relevant to this typologically as the symbol of Roman oppression within Jerusalem. And then I argued this referred to the Antonia Fortress when building my old argument for this being about Augustus even though it made no sense for Augustus to name a fortress after Antony.
When exactly the Antonia was built is a bit unclear, none of Josephus’s references to it are to when it was first built. There is an assumption it was built with Herod’s renovations of the Temple because of it being defined as something built to protect The Temple. But that started years after the death of Mark Antony, Herod wouldn’t be naming something after Antony during that time.
The Antonia fortress was definitely named after Mark Antony. So it being built by or for Mark Antony in like 36 or 35 BC is the most logical explanation for its origin.
The last thing said in this section is “yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him”. Once again I admit this can be made to fit a lot of people, but with Antony it sure does seem like the entire drama of his final days is about all his allies abandoning him, maybe even Cleopatra depending on how you interpret her actions.
And after Antony’s death The Near East is ruled by the man who is identified as ruling it when Jesus was born in Luke chapter 2. Meaning we are in The New Testament era for the start of Daniel 12.
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