Why Is 666 The "Number Of The Beast"? | IFLScience
By: Katie Spalding 10 Jan 2022, 13:06 (IFLScience)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
What's so special about the number 666?
It's the sum of all the numbers on a Roulette wheel, which is nice. For number nerds, it's a double triangle number, which is pretty cool, and it's also equal to the sum of the squares of the first seven prime numbers - try it!
But that's not what most people's minds jump to when they hear 666. After all, not every number has its own phobia.
For most people, the number 666 has one specific meaning: the Rapture, Apocalypse, End of the World - call it what you will, it's harbinger is the number 666. It's all written right there in The Book of Revelation : "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six . "
Sounds spooky! But what's really going on here? Why would a beast have a number at all, let alone a fairly ordinary one like 666? Well, here's the thing: The Book of Revelation is pretty bizarre. And we don't mean that as a dig against Christianity - serious scholars of religion say the same thing.
"The Book of Revelation … [is] very different than anything else you find in the New Testament," explained Princeton's Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion, Elaine Pagels, speaking to NPR in 2012. "There's no moral sermons or ethical ideas or edifying things. It's all visions. That's why it appeals so much to artists and musicians and poets throughout the century."
And there's a good reason for that: "it's wartime literature," Pagels said, written by "John" - likely a refugee from Jerusalem, which had recently been destroyed by the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War.
"It comes out of that war," Pagels said, "and it comes out of people who have been destroyed by war."
When looked at through that lens, the text starts looking a lot less like a vision of the literal apocalypse and a bit more like the kind of thing you'd expect to find in a therapeutic writing class. There's a great scarlet beast mentioned that has seven heads and seven crowns, for instance - not something you're likely to see in the real world, but a thinly-veiled reference to the dynasty of Julius Caesar, Pagels explained.
"Most people think John was writing at about the year 90 in the first century. That would be 60 years after the death of Jesus, and the eruption of Vesuvius happened in the year 79," she said. "Much of what we find in the Book of Revelation couched in the fantastic imagery are descriptions of events that for John were very close — the war in Jerusalem, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Roman Emperors who were ruling at the time."
And it's that last example that's key to understanding the importance of the number 666 - well, that and a bit of numerology. Remember that this was well before the rise of Hindu-Arabic numerals, and contemporary readers would have been used to a range of alphabetical representations of numbers.
"Now what this means is that every word also has a numerical value," explained Numberphile's Pete Watts in the channel's "666" video. "So it's almost as if the text is saying, 'I'm gonna give you a riddle, you need to calculate the number of the Beast.'"
So then, guys, gals, and non-binary pals, let's figure it out - who could the mysterious "Beast" be?
Well, let's look at the evidence: the author of Revelations had been forced to flee his home by the Romans, and would have recently seen a wave of state-sanctioned violence and hostility against (what we would now call) Christians, also at the hands of the Romans. In charge of both these catastrophes was the Emperor Nero, who, despite being dead by the time Revelations was written, many people were convinced was about to come back at any time, like a kind of evil Ancient Elvis. Could the "Beast" be referring to Nero?
Well guess what: "Caesar Nero" translated into Hebrew is ר×× ×§×סר - or, to spell it out letter-by-letter, nun-resh-vav-nun qof-samek-resh. Each of these letters has a value in Hebrew numerals:
If we add up the values of the letters in "Caesar Nero," then, we get ⦠that's right: 666.
"John would have wanted his readers to understand that," Pagels explained. "That number, which is couched in a mysterious code, would be understood to his readers as the name of one of those emperors who destroyed his people."
So not a real beast; not the antichrist; just a particularly anti-Christian Emperor who had really screwed over the writer of Revelations - and who apparently might come back at any moment, so you'd better not piss him off.
"No one wants to write a book under imperial persecutions saying, 'The root of all evil is Nero Caesar,'" added Watts in the Numberphile video. "You're not going to spell that out."
All "explainer" articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.
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As Spock would say....Fascinating
My abacus is on steroids right now.
Mine ran off
Dr. McCoy to Spock, "Please Spock, do me a favor and don't say it's fascinating."
Spock to McCoy, "No. But it is...interesting."
McCoy: (rolls eyes)
ST: TOS, "The Ultimate Computer"
Why does that guy on the bottom bear an eerie resemblance to Spider Man?
Eddie pulls the strings of the devil.
That's exactly where my mind went when I saw this.
Vincent Price. Haha
It's actually Barry Clayton. Price refused to do it for anything less than £25,000. (Had to google it. It didn't sound like Price to me)
I thought it was. Kinda ruined it a little for me...
I didn't for me. It's an intro. It's the rest of the song (and album) that can't be replicated.
It's the Area Code for Mar-a-Lago.
it's the combined IQ of his supporters in congress.
Divided by 100.
Very interesting.
667 - the neighbor of the beast.
Besides being one of my favorite numbers, it also reminds of my teen years.
Wouldn't that depend upon whether 'the beast' was real or imagined?
There is this too. 664 and 665 preceed 666 and 667 and 668 follow. Maybe there is something to this after all? Or not?
And what about 669? Something nefarious about that, isn't there?
I thought I read one time that it is actually marks. One was a mark on the forehead and I think one was a mark on the hand or wrist. Not necessarily numbers.
I remember thinking...I have both...
Me too. Except mine is 396.
An interesting item many don't know and may not mean much is that the earliest known fragment of a manuscript of revelations has the number of the beast as 616, not 666.
In Chinese tradition there is a number to avoid as well. It is the number 4.
When renting out apartments in China, the last floor to be occupied is usually the 4th floor, and often the rent has to be reduced for apartments on that floor to induce people to rent them. As well, car owners do not want licence plates that have the number 4 in them. The prices for products can be just about anything with listed prices varying in half yuan amounts, but jump from 3.5 to 4.5 and skip the price of 4 yuan.