The Independent Variable - Matt Haugland


Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Six six six

Today's date was 6/6/06. I'm sure you've heard a lot about that already. I've noticed a lot of 6s today. I had 6 hits in softball tonight. My jersey is #66. On the way home, I got $6.66 in gas.

But there's a real story behind the number 666. According to the book of Revelation (in the Bible), the number 666 refers to the number of a man's name. In Hebrew, because there are no numerals, every word or name also is a number. It was common to refer to someone's name as a number (i.e., the numerical equivalent of that name). My name in Hebrew, "Mati", is eqivalent to the number 450.

So who's the "beast" (or emporer, as the word "beast" means elsewhere in Revelation) whose name was 666? I believe it clearly is Nero Caesar, the evil emporer who tormented Christians around the time Revelation was written. His name in hebrew is equivalent to the number 666.

But not all copies of the Bible say "666". Some early manuscripts say "616" instead of "666". Why? When Nero's name is spelled in the Latin form, it is equivalent to 616. That can't be a coincidence. Though people today find all kinds of imaginative meanings of 666, it appears the early Christians understood just fine.

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