666 = Meaningless

[Alegis]

Even though 616 is correct I won' change my judgement. People gave it a new meaning in 666.

 

 

Expect some more discoveries like this one, with the recent new technology hundreds and hundreds of old manuscripts have become readable.

[GothiX]

Originally posted by narfblat

Rotate 616 and it looks like "gig".

 

A blackmetal gig, preferrably.

[toms]

"It just shows you that when you study something as cryptic and mystic as the Book of Revelation there's an almost unlimited number of interpretations."

 

The book is thought to have been written by the disciple John and according to the King James Bible, the traditional translation of the passage reads: "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."

 

But Dr. Aitken said that translation was drawn from much later versions of the New Testament than the fragment found in Oxyrhynchus. "When we're talking about the early biblical texts, we're always talking about copies and they are copies made, at best, 150 to 200 years after [the original] was written," she said.

 

"They can have mistakes in the copying, changes for political or theological reasons ... it's like a detective story piecing it all together."

 

Dr. Aitken said, however, that scholars now believe the number in question has very little to do the devil. It was actually a complicated numerical riddle in Greek, meant to represent someone's name, she said.

 

"It's a number puzzle -- the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero."

 

Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. "It's a very political document," Dr. Aitken said. "It's a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it's written in coded language and riddles."

 

Shock horror!!!

 

You mean that the bible isn't the exact word of god? That it has been changed by various translations, politcs and interpretations?

 

My whole faith in christianity has just been destroyed!

 

[SkinWalker]

Originally posted by Dr. Aitken

The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.

 

Where more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the "number of the beast," or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book's apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.

 

It gives immediate rise to the question, "what else in the bible is incorrect?"

 

The Book of Revelations - the dream sequence alleged to be recorded by John, the Disciple, was only ca. 2000 years ago. One has to wonder what errors and intentional misinformation has found its way into books that are allegedly much older, such as the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the bible, a.k.a. the Torah, for those of you who skipped Sunday school).

 

Interestingly, the book of revelations itself appears to be simply a tirade of a Jewish author writing a bitter criticism of Roman Imperialism. John the Apostle is alleged to be the author, but in Acts he is said to be illiterate as an adult. But revelations itself appears to a non-christian work since the doctrine of the Trinity is absent as is the dogma of "original sin." Instead, Revelations focuses on idolatry which damns humanity.

 

But as an anti-Roman propaganda piece, the "666" mention is related to Nero. Gematria, a Jewish numerology, resolves the name Nero Caesar, as it appears in Hebrew (without vowels), into 666. Thus, the original dream sequence might have included 616, but the text in Revelations that we are familiar with today says:

"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. (13.18)

If it was originally "616," then perhaps early Christians wanted to better reflect their disdain for Nero, who blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome and slaughter quite a few as a result.

 

Modern significance placed on the Book of Revelations is, in my opinion, misplaced and superstitious to the point of being ridiculous.

[Nalukai]

isnt 616 the area code for washington dc????

 

just kidding

[Dagobahn Eagle]

OMG!!!

 

If you take the number of letters in "Bush" and add two, you get 6! Number of White Houses - ONe! Name of Cheney=Dick - 4 again, plus 2 equals 6!!!

 

Bu$sh r teh d3vil!!!!1111111:eek:

[TiE23]

http://www.stetson.edu/~efriedma/numbers.html

^^^ Special facts on numbers 0 through 10000.

http://predictions.astrology.com/lng/

^^^ Your lucky number! OMG!

 

You know in that Wikipedia article Pie posted? Well, it says that 6 was imperfect, but mathematically, judging from the first link in this post, it is really quite a perfect number.

 

 

TiE

[Kurgan]

Old News!

 

My RSV Bible from 1997 says that we see both numbers used in different texts, but it's nice to see some evidence of which one was more original.

 

Next up: Upside-Down Crosses, actually not Satanic!*

 

 

 

*speaking purely from origins, not people co-opting symbols for their own agendas and feeding off ignorance of course

[Silent_Thunder]

"Yes. 32.84% of the world (in 2003) according to the CIA, to be precise. And that includes me."

 

-----

 

^^Quoting IG-64

 

 

Not to sound like a humorless arse but while 33% of the world may identify as Christians, that doesn't mean that you can extrapolate it further to mean that 33% of the world believes in the Christian Satan, or believes that Revelations has any prophetic value. In other words, that number doesn't really say much about what they ACTUALLY believe in regard to the supernatural.

 

In the USA only 34% of Christians (and only 1 in 4 Catholics) believe Satan is an actual entity. I know that the USA isn't the entire world, but in every single poll I've seen on the matter, the USA was actually at or towards the top in literal belief of Satan, which means that the rest of the Christian world combined is undoubtably going to have less than 34% of belief... Only a few countries with comparably high 'Conservative Christian' beliefs are nations such as Northern Ireland and Poland. And bear in mind that's just counting the *Christians* that don't believe in Satan, that doesn't even factor in the unbelievers at all, who very likely do not believe in Satan, or if they do, not in the way Christianity defines 'him'.

 

So! Maybe 10% of the world believes in the the Christian Satan, and that's being generous.

 

If that few in the world believe in a literal Christian Satan, I think it's pretty safe to conclude that far less people take 'Fundemental Protestant prophecy reading' seriously, when you realize how closely linked much of the prophecies regarding the "Mark of the Beast" and Satan are.

 

So to answer LightNinja's {probably rhetorical, but whatever} question, yes, a sizeable amount of people still "believe in that stuff" (ie, 666 or 616 having prophetic value) but looking at various polls, I'd be very surprised if it's in the double digits. By the way, 14% of Americans also believe Joan of Arc is Noah's wife... so... whatever