Newswise — Revelation 13:18 ascribes the number "666" to the beast that rises from the sea and says it is also "the number of a man." Since the second century, the number and identity of the malevolent, apocalyptic figure it supposedly identifies have been the focus of endless speculation. Low-church Protestants with an apocalyptic streak favor explanations that identify 666 with the Pope.
However, the best explanation comes from the ancient practice of "gematria," or number mysticism. Gematria assigns numerical significance to letters of the alphabet, e.g., a=1, b=2, c=3 and so on. This can be carried out in any phonetic language, and from the ancient world, we have examples in Greek, Latin, and in Hebrew. Transliterate the phrase "Nero Caesar" into Hebrew characters and assign numerical values those characters based on the rules of gematria, and the sum turns out to be 666.
So in the Book of Revelation, the number probably refers to the nasty ruler responsible for a vicious but short-lived persecution of Christians in the city of Rome, in the years A.D. 64-65. In fact, the belief that a re-animated Nero would come back from the dead is attested in other ancient literature.
As such, "666" refers to something in the past, not in the future. But the number, like the ultimate villain to which it supposedly refers, has taken on a life of its own, as sales figures for the Left Behind books—over 60 million copies—will attest. The next one comes out on June 6, 2006: 06/06/06, a marketing opportunity that only comes along once every thousand years!
(H. Greg Snyder is associate professor at Davidson College and teaches classes on early Christian life and literature, among them, a course entitled, "The Book of Revelation and the Apocalyptic Imagination."
RSS