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True completeness was
only achieved by Jesus Christ, who saved the world through his perfect
sacrifice. If Jesus had a symbolic number, it would be 777 - by assigning 666 to
the "number of the beast," the author of Revelation is warning
Christians to beware of Satan's "cheap imitation of Christ"
BY DAVE
ROOS
Would
you buy a used car with a license plate ending in 666?
Or
take a job at an office tower in New York City with the address 666 Fifth
Avenue?
After
all, 666 is the infamous "number of the beast," allegedly Satan's
secret code for evil.
In the biblical apocalyptic book of Revelation 3:18,
it reads, "Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the
number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is
666."
 |
Is 666 really "the devil's number," or is there a more down-to-earth explanation for these three digits? |
But
when you dig deeper into the Bible and its historical context, there's evidence
that the author of Revelation was using numbers to send his early Christian
readers a coded message.
When
Letters Are Also Numbers
"The
beast" was a reference to an
evil-looking creature that the author of Revelation saw rising out of the earth
in a vision (Revelation 13:11-18).
This
creature could perform miraculous things, would demand that everyone be "marked"
with its name or number in order to buy and sell anything; and would also kill
those who did not worship it.
So,
who was this?
Over
the centuries, people have wondered whether this beast referred to someone who
has come and gone, was yet to come or to no person in particular.
The
book of Revelation was written in Greek, the language of the Christian world in
the first and second century C.E.
There
were no numbers in Greek, at least not the numbers that we'd recognize today.
(Our so-called "Arabic numerals" — 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. — were developed
centuries later.)
Instead,
each letter of the Greek (and Hebrew) alphabet had a numeric value. For
example:
alpha
= 1
beta
= 2
pi
= 80
psi
= 700
For
the Greek-speaking Christians reading Revelation, they would have been very
comfortable reading letters as numbers.
That's
how numbers were displayed in the market or in legal documents.
They
also would have been comfortable turning numbers back into letters thanks to a
practice called isopsephy.
Word
Games With Numbers
Isopsephy, in Greek, means "equal in numeric value,"
and was a popular way of playing with words in the first century.
The
trick was to add up the numeric value of one word and then find a second word
or phrase that added up to the same number.
Words
that were numerically equal were thought to have a special connection.
One
of the best-known first-century isopsephies was referenced by the
Roman historian Seutonius.
"A
calculation new: Nero his mother slew." In this case, the emperor's name "Nero" equals 1,005, the
same value of the phrase "his mother slew."
For
Romans who suspected that the ruthless emperor had murdered his mother, this isopsephy
was the proof.
Archaeologists
have even discovered ancient Roman graffiti that substituted numbers for names,
says Thomas Wayment, a classics professor at Brigham Young University.
"There's graffiti at Smyrna and Pompeii that
says, 'I love her whose number is 1,308,'" says Wayment.
"That's pretty common. And hopefully everybody
did their math correctly and could make the connections."
'666'
Was a Coded Message
Wayment
and most other biblical scholars have no doubt that the author of Revelation
intended 666 to be an isopsephy solved by his first-century
readers.
"The author says, this is the number of a man,
which is a classic isopsephy formula," says Wayment, who recently co-wrote an article on
Revelation 13:18 and early Christian isopsephies.
"Christians would have known right away, this is
a coded message."
Revelation
is famously cryptic and was meant to be that way, even to its original
audience.
Wayment
says that in apocalyptic writings, an angel or other heavenly messenger often
reveals their meaning through coded speech.
"As a reader, you're seeing something through the
eyes of the visionary and he's telling you, 'you need to make sense of
this,'" says Wayment.
"That's part of your experience and participation
in the vision."
According
to most scholars, 666 was yet another coded reference to Nero, a "beastly"
emperor who brutally persecuted early Christians in the Roman Empire.
To
solve the isopsephy and equate Nero to 666, you need to use the
full name "Caesar Nero" in Greek.
If
Caesar Nero is transliterated into Hebrew as nrwn qsr or "Neron
Kesar" and then calculated, the numbers add up to 666.
Interestingly,
some early manuscripts of Revelation have the number written as 616 instead of
666.
The
common explanation is that "Caesar Nero" is written differently in
Greek and Latin, another language spoken by early Christians.
In
the Latin version, the letters only add up to 616.
Other
Readings of '666': Satan's Perfect Imperfection
Not
all Bible scholars are convinced that 666 is simply an isopsephy.
In
biblical symbolism, Hamilton says, the number seven represents
"completeness" or "perfection."
True completeness was only achieved by Jesus Christ,
who saved the world through his perfect sacrifice. If Jesus had a symbolic
number, it would be 777.
By assigning
666 to the "number of the beast," the author of Revelation is
warning Christians to beware of Satan's "cheap imitation of Christ," says Hamilton. "That's the best Satan can do,
one short of perfection."
For
Hamilton, those "false Christs" raised up by Satan could take the
form of a corrupt emperor like Nero or even modern cultural norms that are in
rebellion against God.
"If participating in that culture entails
worshiping false gods or denying something that the Bible teaches, Christians
need to say, 'I'm not going to take the number or name of the beast,'" says Hamilton.
NOW
THAT'S COOL
Third-century
Christians picked up the habit of signing letters with the number 99, the
numeric value of "Amen."
Dave
Roos
CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
Dave
is a freelance journalist who has contributed hundreds of articles to
HowStuffWorks since 2007, with a specialty in personal finance, economics and
business. Raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he attended Duke University where
he earned the B.A. in comparative religious studies that has served him so
well.
Dave
began freelancing when he and his wife moved to Mexico in 2003, publishing
articles about Mexican food and culture in The New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times and Newsweek. Nearly 15 years and three kids later, Dave and his family
recently moved back to Mexico and just might stay a while.
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