What is the mark of the beast? Craig S. Keener explains

there were actually some attempts in the ancient world or ideas in the ancient world of marking people to show loyalty to a particular deity there's a story about this fictitious story in third Maccabees about Ptolemy the fourth philipot or who branded Jews or wanted to brand to Jews with an ivy leaf which was the symbol of Dionysus the background for this though is especially in the Old Testament in Chapter 7 and verse 3 we have an allusion to the mark on the righteous in Ezekiel chapter 9 verses 4 through 6 that's where God marks the righteous so they will be protected when the judgment comes well you have that in chapter 7 now we have the contrast of that in chapter 13 the mark of the beast you either have the the mark of the lamb or you have the mark of the beast and this mark was on the right just to protect them as we said before you've got that in Psalms of Solomon 15 you have some other Old Testament allusions to to things like that God puts a mark on Cain to protect him but in Psalms of Solomon 15 the difference is you have a mark on the righteous you also have a mark on the wicked and here we have a mark on the wicked but again these are both symbolic marks that only God and the Angels saw in all the background texts and therefore probably in this text - it's not it's not a literal mark that's put on people so much as it is a sign of loyalty to the kingdom of the Beast and people who are afraid of getting killed or being cut off economically they go ahead and take the mark they go ahead and blend in to the values of the world system the number of the beasts name or what could that be been various views through history Luther thought it was the Pope the Pope thought it was Luther some people today have said it's the nine digit social security number mentioned in the introduction how some people have joked that it was Barney the Dinosaur you can make any name come out to this including mine if you you know make up the rules as you go but symbolic numbers were standard back then and we find that a lot of times in ancient literature so people would pay attention to the symbolic dimensions of the number 666 is a triangular number it's actually a doubly triangular number now the way you get triangular numbers I used to play with this when I was 9 you know if you take square blocks you take you want to keep it square you you have to have the same number on the bottom and on the side so you've got four you've got nine with a base of three and three on the side and so on well triangular numbers or what happens when you try to build it as a triangle instead of a square an equilateral triangle and so if if you have eight on the bottom then the total number of elements or squares that you have in the whole composition would be 36 if you have 36 in the bottom the entire number of blocks you would have would be 666 so it's a doubly triangular number they're only four doubly triangular numbers between a hundred and a thousand so that might be significant it's also about two-thirds of 1,000 you can play other math games with it six could be a parody of seven I actually think that's probably the most likely background for it this was proposed by Irenaeus in the late second century it implies evil Jesus calculated in as in numerical values comes out to 888 so it could be a parody on that when it says calculate the number of the name it means Duga Maitreya go Maitreya was a Jewish practice although wasn't limited to Jews but the name demetria's especially a Jewish name where you calculate the number of a name you take the numerical value of all the letters in the name so for example later rabbis would do this in Genesis 14 when Abram goes to rescue his his nephew lot they said well these these all these men that he had with them he really didn't have all this army with them all he had was Eliezer of Damascus his servant with him it was the two of them single-handedly who beat the enemies because they calculated the number of eleazar's name and it came out to the same number as the number of people who were supposedly with him in Genesis 14 sometimes they could get very fanciful with this but each letter had a numerical value so in Greek for example you don't speak of first Peter you speak of Petra alpha you don't speak of second Peter you speak of Petra beta alpha the first letter of the Greek alphabet stood for the numeral one they didn't have separate numerals besides that in Greek the same in Hebrew olive stood for one bait the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet stood for two gimel the third letter stood for three and so on well interestingly enough people were playing on the name of Nero they said Nero Caesar they calculated it out in Greek letters what that would come out to and the B phrase he murdered his mother which instantly he had also comes out to the same numerical value so you find this in bathroom graffiti around the Roman Empire Nero Caesar is his name killed his mother it is the same but if you spell Nero Caesar in Hebrew letters it comes out to 666 hmm is that a coincidence it was standard in Jewish prophecy tradition to take rulers as numbers often based on the first letters of the name most commentators here think that this is a reference to to Nero now there are some objections to this one is that it only works in he letters and revelation is written in Greek it's true but revelation also presupposes the knowledge of some Hebrew word place like with abadan in chapter 9 and verse 11 or with her mageddon in 1616 also another early document third barrack calculates Greek words and Hebrew letters and probably many already knew the answer of the riddle but there's another objection and that is hey there's two ways to spell Nero Caesar in Hebrew and so how do you know that this is the right way to spell it well yeah the other way to spell it is found in in later rabbinic documents where a Nero Caesar comes out to 616 instead of 666 but the early spelling that's been found on a document from the Judean Desert from this period actually spells it in a way that comes out to 666 and interestingly enough and a later period when scribes were copying the book of Revelation some wrote it down not a 666 but as 616 as if they knew the answers to the riddle but thought it was misspelled or miscalculated something else is of interest and it may suggest a double wordplay and his name just like you have with a phrase mother killer in Greek beast is theory on in Greek but if you spell that Greek word in Hebrew letters the numerical value is 666 and of the beast if you spell that in Hebrew letters it comes out to 616 but something more important theologically than the exact meaning of the number of the name is this chapter 13 the final closing paragraph talks about those who receive the mark of the beast but chapter 14 and there were no chapter breaks in the original immediately opens up with speaking about the hundred forty-one thousand with the lamb on Mount Zion and what was written on them was the name of the lamb there's a contrast between the glorious fate of God's martyrs and the damned to took the mark and the the point is you've got to serve somebody choose this day whom you will serve the beasts were the lamb

Channel: zondervan

Views: 191,556

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Keywords: Craig S. Keener, Mark of the Beast, 666, Revelation 13

Id: r3eIWA9XSo4

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2018