The Number 666 & The Essence of the Beast

I.

Let us take a look at 666 - "the number of the beast", and at what it might really mean.

The first mention of it is in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible. Chapter 13 tells us about a seven-headed beast, and it ends..

Here is wisdom. 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 threescore and six.

There has been a great deal of speculation about this number through the centuries, and apart from Antichrist and Satan, it has been connected to the names of several more or less famous (or infamous) men of history. Sometimes it looks like a puzzle of recreational mathematics, when someone tries, really tries hard, to generate 666 out of a desired name. We will not linger on all these examples, let us just look at two of them, before we turn to (in my opinion) the most likely solution.

If you put A=100, B=101, C=102, etc... and change the letters of the name "Hitler" to numbers, the sum is 666.

A fanatic anti-Catholic once made a construction to "prove" that the Pope is the Beast. He added the numerals (Roman numerals - other letters where ignored) in one of the pope's Latin titles:

V I C AR I V S F I L I I D E I

5+1+100 …+1+5 …+1 +50+1+1+500 …+1 = 666!

It would be possible to find a large number of examples in literature, but in the end I think the most probable explanation is the Roman emperor Nero. A view that is shared by most scholars.

II.

To solve this sort of enigma, it is necessary to pay attention to the historical environment it was created in, its realities, and its way to think.

Methods of assigning numerical values to letters, and thus to words, names, and sentences - and then using them for comparison, interpretation, prediction, and divination – have been extensively used through history. The oldest known example is from 8th century B.C. Babylonia. During the Antiquity it was common, and it probably came quite naturally to cultures where letters were also used as numerals; as with the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews. Greek methods later influenced Germanic rune magic, and Hebrew methods still prevail in Cabbalism.

Another base for this thinking was the tremendous importance paid to words. A word (or a name) had a magical meaning, containing the essence of what it was denoting.

The political reality was a still heathen Rome, persecuting the early Christians, occupying the Middle East, and (in 70 A.D.) destroying Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

The author of the Revelation was John, a Christian from Asia Minor (probably not the Apostle or the Evangelist, although that is a matter of dispute).

The Beast is said to have seven heads, and chapter 17 further indicates that it would be a sequence of rulers, it is hard to believe that anything else than Roman rulers would be referred to.

III.

If we count with the Greek alphabet - and we should, because the New Testament was originally written in Greek - and put alpha=1, beta=2, ..., omega=24, then we get the sum 666, if - to the word Kaisar - we add the seven rulers (in Greek form): Neron, Vespasianos, Titos, Domitianos, Nervas, Traianos, and Hadrianos.

An old hand script has 616 - which might be an older version that was early discarded. We get 616 if we omit the word Kaisar, and use the seven names: Neron, Galba, Othon, Vitellios, Vespasianos, Titos, and Domitianos.

This suggests that the chapters 13 and 17 were compiled during the end of the Flavian time [The Flavian Dynasty, 69-96 AD]. The changed conditions of the time just after that generated a change from 616 to 666, and the interregnum rulers were removed from the list (they were never recognised over the entire empire anyway), to keep the number of rulers to seven.

This can be the reason for the mentioning of ten diadems (instead of seven); since, of the ten rulers from Nero to Hadrian, only seven were undisputed rulers.

IV.

This interpretation is completely in line with the Nero legend, which was well-known at the time; and it gives a significance to what the Revelation says, that one of the (seven) heads was mortally wounded but was healed.

After Nero's suicide in the year 68, it was held by many that he was still alive and would one day return from the kingdom of Parthia to rule again.

The seven-headed beast was then a sequence of emperors, beginning with Nero, where he would return as the eighth - compare the octave and its tonic. As the first and the eighth, he would be the essence of the Beast!

Appendix - Roman emperors from Nero to Hadrian:

Nero* (54-68), Galba (68-69), Otho (69), Vitellius(69), Vespasian* (69-79), Titus*(79-81), Domitian* (81-96), Nerva* (96-98), Trajan* (98-117), Hadrian* (117-138).

*= the seven "undisputed" emperors.

(This material has previously been published in TMA/Meriondho Leo and in my e-book “Numericon”.)

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