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We've all heard that, in the book of Revelation, the number of the Beast is 666.
Whatever does this mean?
And if the Beast has a number, do others?
Does the name of Jesus have a number?
Does the name of God have a number?
Here's the story. . . .
Today we are used to having a different set of characters to represent letters and numbers.
Our alphabet of letters runs from A to Z, and our system of numbers--or basic numbers--runs
from 0 to 9.
But in the ancient world they didn't have two sets of characters for these. Instead,
the letters of their alphabets doubled as characters representing numbers.
That's why, for example, Roman numerals are composed of letters.
In Latin, some of the letters did double duty as numbers, so I meant 1, V meant 5, X meant
10, L meant 50, C meant 100, D meant 500, and M meant 1,000.
To get other numbers you had to combine these in various ways, like using II for 2, III
for 3, and IV for 4.
Hebrew and Aramaic used the same alphabet, and so they used the same number set.
Unlike Latin, every letter in the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets had a numerical value.
Basically, the first ten letters of the alphabet--aleph through yod--represented 1 through 10. The
second ten letters--kaph through qoph--represented 20 through 90. And the final three letters--resh
through tau--represented 200 through 400.
The Greek system was very similar to the one used for Hebrew and Aramaic.
In it, the first ten letters--alpha through iota--were 1 through 10. The second ten letters--kappa
through rho--were 20 through 100. And the final eight letters--sigma through a now unused
letter called sampi--were 200 through 900.
All of this made it possible for people to calculate the numbers of a word or phrase--any
word or phrase--in a given language.
One of my favorite examples is in a piece of graffiti found in the ruins of the city
of Pompeii, which was covered by the volcanic explosion of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D 79.
This graffito reads: "I love her whose number is 545."
We'll never know just who this was. But I hope whatever woman's name added up to 545
saw the graffito and knew that she had a secret admirer.
Whoever may have borne this ancient number, we can use this system to shed light on important
questions for us today, like, "Who had the number of the Beast?"
In the book of Revelation, we are told:
This calls for wisdom: Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is
a man's number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six [Rev. 13:18].
That would suggest that the number 666 is what we would get by adding up the number
of a man's name.
But which man's?
If we look at the other things that the book of Revelation says about the Beast, it is
clear that the beast is a king who rules over many nations, receives divine worship, persecutes
Christians, and is connected with pagan Rome.
That points us toward the Roman emperors of the first century to find the true identity
of the Beast.
It is no surprise, then, when we add up the numbers of the phrase "Nero Caesar" in Hebrew,
and we get 666.
His name can be spelled Nun-Resh-Waw-Nun Qop-Samekh-Resh.
Nun is 50. Resh is 200. Waw is 6. Nun is 50.
Qop is 100. Samekh is 60. And Resh is 200.
Add it all up, and you get 666.
His name was also spelled in other ways. In one of them, the name "Nero" was spelled without
the second Nun. It was just Nun-Resh-Waw.
If you leave off the second Nun, the total for the name drops to 616.
Significantly, there is an early manuscript tradition in which the number of the beast
is given as 616, suggesting some of the early copyists were quite aware of the identification
of Nero with the beast.
But there is another number that would have stood out in the minds of the first hearers
of Revelation . . .
That other number is what you get if you add up the letters of the word "Jesus" in Greek.
In Greek, "Jesus" is pronounced "Iesous." (Please note that it's Iesous, not Iezeus.)
Iesous is spelled Iota-Eta-Sigma-Omicron-Upsilon-Sigma.
Iota has a value of 10. Eta is 8. Sigma is 200. Omicron is 70. Upsilon is 400. And Sigma
is 200.
If you add all that up, what do you get?
888.
The early hearers of Revelation knew that, and they could not have failed to see the
contrast between the beast's number of 666 and Jesus' number of 888.
While we're on the subject, let's look at one last example out of simple curiosity.
The most famous set of letters in the Old Testament are the four used to spell God's
name, Yahweh.
They're so well know that they have their own name--the Tetragrammaton--which is Greek
for "the four letters."
In Hebrew the letters are Yod, He, Waw, and He.
Yod represents 10. He is 5. Waw is 6. And He is 5.
What number do they total?
26.
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