Bible Gem 2311 – The Mystery of the Number of His Name (Revelation 13:7-8)

¹⁷And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name. ¹⁸Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.

Revelation 13:17-18

666 is one of the most debated, tantalizingly enigmatic of all Bible mysteries, the most dominant of Bible puzzles. Much speculation has been offered since John first wrote that number in his letter, apocalyptic advice to the churches of his day. The number invites curiosity, but added to the mystery is that John himself wrote “Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast.” Oh, so there is meaning behind the number, John? There is a puzzle or a mystery to be solved. In those very words are the hint that this is something to be solved. The literal words are:

The number of the beast is explicitly said to be: the number of the name is a man’s number. Or is it that the number of the name is a human number. i.e. the calculations used to work out the meaning of the name is derived in the common way of man, human ways? I will address the second of these in a subsequent Gem.

The [arithmos] ‘number’ is to be understood by using our [nous] minds; ‘intellectual ways’ to work it out. To reckon or to calculate on the basis of gematria –  psephizo / isopsethia. Isopsethia leads us into the world of gematria. Gematria is based on the fact that all three biblical languages [ Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek] are alpha-numeric languages. What does that mean? It simply means that such languages don’t have a second set of symbols for numbers. Rather, the numbers are combined with the symbols for the letters or the sounds of the language – the phonics of the text or script. In an alpha-numeric language each symbol represents a sound and a number. i.e. each symbol has a dual role. Thus, with an alpha-numeric language, each letter has a number value, therefore each word has a number value, each phrase, clause or sentence has a number value. Oh, now things are getting interesting. With a few strokes of the pen, {taps on the keyboard}, I have taken you into the world of gematria or [ψηφίζω] psēphizō which is the verb used by John in verse 13:18 to tell us we can calculate the meaning or the value of the number [arithmos]. I am sure you recognise the English word derived from the Greek word [arithmos]. I don’t need to spell it out, do I?

It is easy to turn a name into a number, the reverse is not so easy. A sum (number) has only one correct answer (combination of letters) referring to a specific name. But a sum (number) can be the answer to many different letter combinations, i.e. names. Therein lies the difficulty. This is all based on the values given to letters primarily in the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets. You can find these values for yourself on the internet. Simply type the word gematria into your search engine and you will be able to research / play for hours.

There weren’t enough letters in the Greek alphabet at the time, so they adopted certain obsolete letters and signs to incorporate additional letters in order to have enough to cover the set of letters with higher value. So di-gamma and koppa etc were added. Lower case letters and upper case letters were also used. “His number is the number associated with a name.” It’s a human number: six hundred sixty-six. [χξς] see the interlinearised text above.

• Χ  – 600
• Ξ –    60
• Σ –      6

In the list immediately above, the lower case numbers were clipped straight from the text of Revelation 13:18 in lower case format. When I clipped them and put them into the list the numbers automatically changed into capital letters, as happens when you put a normal letter at the front of the sentence, they turn into capital letters. Notice the differences in form. Some systems of gematria use the capital letter to contrast with the lower case form of the letter to expand the set of number values, while adding the obsolete letters as well. Yes I know it’s complicated, but I don’t want to get into the complication here. Suffice to say any name can be calculated as a number while any number can have multiple names associated with it as in my comment above. If 666 is the number of a certain man, the challenge is to work back from the number. 

G. A. Deissmann quoted an example from graffito [read graffiti] found in Pompeii in an article in Light from the Ancient Near East and in his book Bible Studies “I love her whose number is 545”. It was a practice of the time to use this coded way of referring to someone you wanted to keep secret. If the number 666 represents the name of an individual in John’s time frame, it has to be a prominent person of the 1^st Century. Much space and many words have been written about that over the centuries. I am not intending to give you an historical breakdown of all the options creative human beings have come up with in their quest to find the solution. But I will choose six examples to demonstrate.

ONE – A crazy example^* from modern times is found in Lehman Strauss’ The Book of Revelation p 257.

If you start with A = 100, B = 101, C = 102 and so on . . . Then:-

• H – 107
• I   – 108
• T  – 119
• L  –   111
• E  – 104
• R  –  117
  • 666

^*The above example does not use the standard chart of values for the letters in Greek. This particular example is contrived in order to arrive at the desired solution. The following examples employ the standard values.

TWO – The standard answer is to accept that Nero Caesar in Hebrew [Nun נ Waw ו Reš ר Nun נ / Aleph א Reš ר Samek ס Yod י Koph ק] was transliterated into Greek qysr’ nrwn. The value of qysr = 360, nrwn = 306 combined total 666. But the final Aleph (‘) in ‘rsyq is dropped, having no equivalent in Greek. If it were added it bring the total to 667. [א = 1]

THREE – There is a variation on this found in Western texts which are based on Hebrew transliterated into Latin then into Greek where the final n of qysr nrwn is dropped resulting in qysr nrw and thus the nun is lost and the value of 50 is subtracted from 666 resulting in a total of 616. There are Western Text examples of Revelation 13:18 recorded as 616. There is an Aramaic manuscript found in Wadi Murabba’at where Nero is spelt without a final n.

FOUR – Stanislaus Giet cites an example from the Sibylline Oracles which lists the Roman Emperors from Julius Caesar in their chronological order listed by the initial letter of their names added together so the gematria of each reportedly totals 666. The list of the Caesars in order from 44 BC to 96 AD is: Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian. But G. B. Caird’s in his commentary The Revelation of St John notes that to make the gematria add to 666 necessitates omitting Otho and Vitellius without any reason why.

FIVE – Irenaeus [120~140 to 203 AD] the most prominent theologian of the 2nd Century, offered three possibilities of names, the gematria of which each total 666: Euanthas, Lateinos (The Roman Empire), Teitan (Titus).

SIX – Ethelbert Stauffer (a modern German theologian who died in 1979) came up with an ingenious solution according to G. B. Caird, that John was calculating the number of Domitian’s full title abbreviated, which under standard gematria values adds up to 666. Domitian’s full title in Greek was Autokrator Kaiser Dometianos Sebastos Germanicus. The abbreviation of this full title was shortened to A.KAI.ΔOMET.ΣEB.ΓE.

The value of each letter according to standard gematria is :

• A – 1
• K – 20
• A – 1
• I – 10
• Δ – 4
• O – 70
• M – 40
• E – 5
• T – 300
• Σ – 200
• E – 5
• B – 2
• Γ – 3
• E – 5
• 666

Apart from the Kaiser Nerō suggestion, this one is the most outstanding and sensible, with the exception of an option I will lay before you in the next Gem. There has been one criticism levelled against this ingenious suggestion by Stauffer alleging each individual abbreviation is well attested to Kaiser Domitian – Autokrator, Kaiser Dometianos Sebastos Germanicus. The abbreviation was then put on the coins associated with each emperor. A.KAI.ΔOMET.ΣEB.ΓE. has not yet been found with all five abbreviations displayed together on a single existing coin of Domitian.

Despite that fact it is quite natural to suspect Domitian could well have been considered one of the most likely candidates for Antichrist in the First Century AD. Caligula is the third most likely candidate. Number One on the hit list for Antichrist was Nero, fuelled by the malicious way he hunted the followers of Christ. But what is surprising is that Nero was not on Irenaeus’ list of likely candidates. The citizens of the Roman Empire were convinced that Kaiser Nero could well be the Antichrist. He certainly fitted the role of candidate for such a tyrant. But interestingly there was no time when he played the role of Antichrist as a lamb; rather he was all Beast, without sheep’s clothing.

The only other pretenders I need to tell you about are those involved with the Nero redivivus myth. This myth was spread as a result of a belief that Nero would return from the east, around the Euphrates River, and retake the imperial throne of Rome and destroy his enemies. Nero was deposed as Emperor by the Senate 8 June 68 AD and declared to be a public enemy of the Empire. He committed suicide a month later on 9th July 68. But the myth grew in popularity because there was a scarcity of witnesses coming forward to say they had seen his body and to declare he’d died. Suetonius was the first to record the belief that Nero would come back from the dead and destroy his enemies. The story spread that he had escaped to Parthia and would return with an army. There are six extensive references in the Sibylline Oracles to this prediction. Many refused to believe Nero was dead and the phenomenon was called Nero redivivus – Nero alive again. Chrysostom recorded, “Even now everyone wishes Nero were alive and most people actually believe it.”

The False Nero Pretenders

There were at least two or three pretenders for a revived Nero:

1. An unnamed false Nero appeared in AD 69 who looked and spoke like the real Nero. He was either a slave from Pontus or a freedman from Italy who bore enough resemblance to the original to fool people. He escaped to Cynthus and was executed by Calpurnius and the body taken to Rome to dispel the myth.
2. Terentius Maximus was an Asiatic who appeared in AD 80 and looked and spoke like Nero. For that reason he was able to gather a considerable band of supporters who followed him to the Euphrates Valley.
3. This unnamed pretender appeared in AD 88 and was referred to by Suetonius in Nero 57.2. This wannabe Nero imitated the gait of the original and dressed like him. He travelled with an entourage parroting the things Nero said when he was alive.
4. There were reports of two more such pretenders by Tacitus who wrote of two Nero pretenders who would come out of the East at the head of a Parthian army to retake the Imperial throne of Rome. But these related writings of Tacitus have been lost in antiquity.

We could detect a hint of what academics call the mixture of the eschatological-antagonist myth. The combination of the return of the most infamous Roman Emperor combined with the expectation of the Messiah who will come and restore hope of the future promise.

Don’t forget that the point of apocalyptic writing was to couch the information in coded ways so that Christians were not apprehended and accused of working against the Emperor or the Roman Empire. Hence, encoding of information in symbolism meant the information was not readily understood. That is why the sign of the fish originated in the environment of the First Century AD as a secret sign for a Christian gathering meets here.

Images [eikōn] were placed before the public to remind them of the Emperor. Those images could be effigies, coins, imago [painted on banners or standards], busts, statues – called the ‘imagines’. There was another more elaborate kind called [xaragma], graven images, normally statues used with some form of trickery like a ventriloquist or a small person or child hidden inside the statue who would speak for the statue or the Emperor. Christians were then brought before such eikōn or xaragma and tested to see whether they would bow down. If not the image or statue would speak forth their punishment. [See Revelation 13:15]

There is another way of looking at all of this symbolism which I will deal with in the next Gem as I mentioned above.

Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.

Revelation 13:18

No matter how smart we are, our understanding will never fully grasp the depth of the Word of God.

Ian

The depth of your relationship with God is measured by the depth of your understanding of the Word of God. 

A R Bernard

Maturity isn’t when you start speaking big things, it’s actually when we start understanding small things.

Ian