666: What Does It REALLY Mean?

666 is known as the devil's number or the number of the beast some people think it's a particularly unlucky or evil number but where does it come from and what does it really mean 666 originates from the book of Revelation the last book of the New Testament and for those of you who have read it you know it's a pretty crazy book it's basically the recounting of a bunch of visions by a guy who calls himself John it includes everything from a dragon to a star falling out of the sky and turning the entire ocean to poison valleys filling with the blood of slain people you know pretty apocalyptic stuff the number 666 comes in chapter 13 verses 17 to 18 in this chapter John has a vision of a multi-headed beast rising out of the ocean the Beast has great power it enslaves the people of Earth it kills the Saints it forces people to blaspheme God and it forces people to put the mark of the beast on the right hand and on the forehead let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for it is the number of a man and his number is six six six notice here that John's not talking about Satan and he's not talking about a demon he's talking about something that he calls a beast and a man so who is it the scholars generally agree that the book of Revelation is an extended polemic against the Roman Empire in chapter 13 the Beast is meant to represent the Roman Empire itself an evil institution that enslaves the world the heads of the Beast are therefore interpreted to be the Roman emperors 666 is thought to be a secret code for the evilest emperor of them all Nero let's take Nero's Greek name near ankh ice are attested here on a bunch of Nero's Greek coins and let's spell it in Hebrew letters both Greeks and Jews in the first century believed that every single letter had a corresponding number add the values of those letters together and you get 666 sounds weird but believe me this was a very common practice in the ancient world called gematria so here are some examples some graffiti on a wall and Pompeii reads I love the woman whose number is 545 so any passerby in Pompeii reading this graffiti wouldn't exactly know who it's referring to but they would have definitely recognized the number as gematria Greek authors make reference to Kamaria all the time so for example straight o of Sardis who was a famous second century Greek poet proves to us in one of his epigrams that he knows what kamat rhea is and he has way too much time on his hands anus and gold have the same numerical value i once discovered this while casually calculating and he's right the Greek word for anus and the Greek word for gold both have a value of 1570 so c'mon tria by no means was a fringe practice everybody was doing it whether you were scrawling the name of your crush on a wall whether you were writing bathroom humor epigrams or whether you were writing crazy mystical apocalypses from very early on in christian history nero is viewed as the arch villain of christianity early church historians like Eusebius and roman historians like sweet Onias both mentioned nero violently persecuting christians burning them alive in rome whoever wrote the book of Revelation had a vendetta against the Roman Empire and viewed Nero as one of the greatest evils on earth we don't exactly know why some scholars think that the book was written shortly after the persecutions from Nero in Rome which would make the book surprisingly early other people think that the book was written later in the first century under the reign of Domitian but we don't know if that's true because there's no evidence of persecutions happening under the reign of Domitian either way this does demonstrate that the traditions surrounding Nero dates back very early in Christian history the connection between 666 and Nero is further strengthened by chapter 13 verse 3 one of the beasts heads seemed to have a mortal wound but it's mortal wound was healed according to the Jewish mystical texts the sibylline oracles Nero is thought to be resurrected at the end of time to continue wreaking havoc on earth so the book of Revelation might be tacitly referencing this tradition after all the author does seem to be deeply steeped in Jewish mysticism now some of you might be sitting there thinking this is a stretch or just a coincidence you had to switch the Greek word into Hebrew letters I'm not buying it fair enough but too early manuscripts of the book revelation all but seal it for me these two manuscripts accidentally write six one six instead of six six six this isn't a simple matter of messing up a pen stroke 6-1-6 also spells Nero in Hebrew goo matreya but only if you drop off the final n now six one six is probably not the original reading most of our manuscripts say 666 our earliest manuscript says 666 but this does show that there was an alternative reading circulating at the time and that alternative reading also was a cypher for the name Nero why the switch well one New Testament scholar bruce metzger theorizes that it's the switch from the Greek form of Nero's name to the Latin form of nearest name which doesn't have that final end for example note how his name lacks the N in these Latin coins minted during his reign now what started as a secret code for Nero's name has exploded into all kinds of conspiracy theories and predictions of the future one of the more common theories is that RFID chip implants will be a harbinger of the Apocalypse and we're gonna be talking about the 666 the microchip book of Revelation says of that time that no man will be able to buy or sell unless they received the mark of the beast now as interesting as it might be to study some of these YouTube prophets and their conspiracy theories one thing that they generally have in common is that they brush aside the historical context of the book of Revelation using the text as a guide book to tell the future rather than taking it seriously as a text from a specific historical moment in the late 1st century I have a bunch of research in the description below if you'd like to dig deeper and as always thanks for watching and I'll see you next time you

Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

Views: 201,896

Rating: 4.8372993 out of 5

Keywords: 666, Mark of the Beast, RFID Chip Implant, What does 666 mean?, Book of Revelation, Apocalypse of John, Revelations, 666 explained, what is 666, 666 meaning, antichrist, revelation, John, satan, devil, Nero, Caesar

Id: 7-PqevqQEQ4

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/parker9832]

I am a regular subscriber to Religion for Breakfast, I even use it in my High School Sunday School Classes. This particular video is great because it reminds us the books of the Bible were written for an audience and a purpose that is not Western Contemporary.

[u/KiwiHellenist]

A few addenda:

1. The gematric equation between Nero's name and the number should probably be supplemented with an additional equation with the word 'beast', making it a case of isopsephy and not only gematria:

   Νέρων Καῖσαρ / נרונ קסר (Nrwn Qsr) = 666 = θήριον ('beast') / תריון
   Nero Caesar / נרו קסר (Nrw Qsr) = 616 = θηρίου ('of the beast') / תריו

2. Transliterating Greek words to Hebrew script for the calculation isn't a stretch: there are parallels. in 3 Baruch chapter 4, we find numbers used which draw on the equations

   'dragon' δράκων > דרקון drqwn = 360
   'deluge' κατακλυσμός > קטקליסמס qtqlsms = 409

   (I'd also like to hope there are other examples that I haven't turned up.)

3. The alternate reading 616 is famously attested in P115 (P. Oxy. 4499), and was known to Irenaeus. P115 doesn't demonstrate the precedence of 616, though. The number is preceded by a gap in the papyrus, then the word 'or', then the number 616. Pretty much the only sensible conclusion is that it originally read 'its number is 666 or 616', i.e. it quoted both variants (and that's how the original editor of P115 supplemented the text). And Irenaeus and P47 -- both earlier than P115 -- opt for the 666 reading, though Irenaeus doesn't know a good reason to do so: presumably it's simply the reading he had encountered most often. He and Victorinus of Pettau did pick up on the fact that the number was tied up with gematria, though.

I wrote a blog post on this a year ago, which may be interesting for some -- but I don't imagine it'll have any news for the experts here: I don't want to try to teach anyone's grandmother to suck eggs.

[u/Vehk]

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