...............................................................................................
The
Number Of The Beast
What You Need to
Know About the Number of the Beast
MICHAEL S.
HEISER/BIBLE STUDY MAGAZINE
This would mean 666 is a symbol for the
abominable Baal, the dark lord of the Old Testament world—satanic power in New
Testament thinking.
If there's one
part of the Bible virtually everyone has heard of, it's 666—the "number
of the beast."
And if there's one thing no one
can agree upon, it's what that number stands for.
We find the
number in Revelation 13:18, "Let him who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast. It is the number of a man. His number is six
hundred and sixty-six."
The wording here is important:
John tells readers that the number needs to be "calculated," which means there must be a hidden meaning
behind it.
But how do we calculate it?
Calculating
Symbolism
One option for solving this biblical riddle is gematria, the idea that numbers
have symbolic meaning.
While
some have called gematria a
tool for speculation, it actually derives from an ancient convention in
languages like Greek and Hebrew where letters of the alphabet are used to
represent numbers.
But gematria is not limited to just Revelation; the New Testament contains
several other symbolic figures.
The
153 fish of John 21:11 could be interpreted as ancient symbolism for the
church, the body of Christ and the Old Testament sons of God as analogous to
believers in the church.
The
Greek word for "dove," like the dove that descends on Jesus at His
baptism, has a numerical value equivalent to the first and last letters of the
Greek alphabet, thus symbolizing the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8).
Calculating 666
When it comes to 666, one gematria explanation is
that the number represents Nero Caesar.
The
Greek Neron Kaisar adds up to 1,005, but when the name is
transliterated into the Hebrew letters nrwn qsr, the sum is 666.
Nero
Caesar also would explain the variant number of the Beast (616) found in some
New Testament manuscripts.
Transliterating
the Latin Nero Caesar into Hebrew, nrw qsr, yields 616, suggesting
John may have been thinking of the well-known Nero Redivivus myth when writing
about the beast (i.e., that Nero would rise from the dead to destroy
Christians).
The gematria solution
presents three major problems: it could be viewed as cheating with the
spellings (the usual Hebrew spelling for Caesar is q'st,
not qsr, although the qsr form
does exist).
It
assumes that readers knew Hebrew well enough to do the transliteration from
Greek back into Hebrew.
And,
perhaps most tellingly, the early Christian commentators who knew of the Nero
Redivivus myth never identified 666 with Nero.
Ancient Sudoku
There is another possibility: 666 is a magic square.
From
very ancient times, philosophers and mathematicians were fascinated that the numbers
1–36 could be arranged in squares so that each row and diagonal would add up to
the same sum (the same principle as modern Sudoku).
One
magic square has four rows and two diagonals that each add up to 111.
The
six lines of 111 = 666.
Each
magic square in ancient Jewish and Greek tradition was also associated with a
celestial body.
In
the case of the 666 square that body was the sun, which was associated with
Zeus, the highest god in the Greek pantheon.
Zeus
was often associated with Baal and the mythological north (tsaphon) of Canaanite religion.
Most
relevant to the Beast of Revelation is Baal's (and Zeus') title, "lord of
heaven" (Baal-shamem).
It
is possible that the "abomination of desolation" (shiqquts-shamem) in Daniel 9:27 is a play
on Baal-shamem,
since the Old Testament writers sometimes substituted words that meant
"shame" or "abomination" into proper names that formerly
contained "Baal" (e.g., Mephibosheth, Ish-Bosheth).
This
would mean 666 is a symbol for the abominable Baal, the dark lord of the Old
Testament world—satanic power in New Testament thinking.
Article courtesy of Bible Study Magazine published
by Faithlife Corporation. Originally published in
print, Vol. 4 No. 5.
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