NumberBeast

Few things in the book of Revelation have raised as much interest as the "Number of the Beast" mentioned in 13:18,
and fewer verses have been more misinterpreted than that one. Revelation 13:18 says, "Here is wisdom: let him who
has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: his number is 666."

While this verse may seem mysterious to modern readers, its basic meaning was clear to the Christians to whom the
book of Revelation was originally written around the year 96. They interpreted the verse as a reference to a way of
writing numbers by using letters of the alphabet as numerals. The use of letters to represent numerical amounts is
called gematria.

To get some idea of what the old Greek gematria was like, you could make a simple code using the English alphabet:

A = 1, B = 2, and so forth, until J = 10, K = 20, L = 30, and so forth, until S = 100, T = 200, and so forth, until Z =
800. Using this code, you can write any numerical amount from 1 to 899.

In the Roman Empire in the first century, Greek gematria was no secret code. It was the ordinary way to write
numerals. Everyone who knew how to write Greek also knew this form of numeral-writing. It has been found in all
sorts of ancient settings, from the graffiti on the walls of the ruins of the city of Pompeii to the dignified writings of
Roman poets.

The Greek alphabet only contained 24 letters, so three more letters were needed in order to make it possible to
represent all numerals from 1 to 999. The number six was represented by the obsolete letter digamma. This letter
could be written in two different ways, one of which

was also called stigma, or stau, a combination of the

letters sigma and tau. For 90, the obsolete letter koppa

was used, and for 900, the obsolete letter sampi was used.

To indicate that the letters were intended to represent

numerical amounts, a small dash was placed beside or

above the character. When writing numerals above

1,000, the same letters were used, with the dash on the

other side of the letter.

An early Christian writer named Irenaeus commented

about Revelation 13:18 in about the year 184, in a

composition called Against Heresies. Irenaeus, in his

youth, had heard Polycarp, and Polycarp had heard

John, in Ephesus. But Irenaeus did not confidently declare

what word was represented by "666." He said that if God

had wanted everyone to know the name with certainty, He would have revealed the name itself. But Irenaeus was sure
that the verse meant that the church should beware of a ruler whose name contains letters that have a numerical value
that adds up to 666.

Irenaeus suggested the word "LATEINOS" (in Greek, S), which could refer to the small political state that
eventually became the Roman Empire, or to, more generally, to a Latin man. He also mentioned that some people
thought that EUANTHAS ( T S) was the name. Irenaeus did not explain what "Euanthas" meant. It was
probably a way of referring to the last name of Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator of Judea in the mid-60's, whose
severe oppression of the Jewish people provoked the First Jewish Revolt, in which the Temple at Jerusalem was
desecrated and destroyed. Irenaeus liked the idea that the name TEITAN might be the name, but he insisted that it
would be wrong to rule out other possibilities.

Some other interpreters believe that John intended to depict the persecution ordered by Roman Emperor Domitian as a
return to the days of Emperor Nero, who had killed many Christians in the city of Rome. As a point in favor of their
view, they claim that "Nero Caesar," if it is spelled a certain way in Hebrew, has a numerical value of 666 in Hebrew
gematria. However, while the Roman Empire is portrayed as the persecutor of the saints in Rev. 17, John was writing
in Greek (not Hebrew), and Hebrew gematria was not commonly used. A more likely view is that the name of the
"Beast," or the name of its leader, signifies its leader's nature as a false Messiah who imitates Jesus but falls short of
His true power and divine nature. The name Jesus, written in Greek letters as S S, has a numerical value of 888.

Many interpreters today believe that the name to which John refers in Revelation 13:18 will be the name of a worldwide
government, or the name of a leader of that government, in the last days. To the original readers of the book of
Revelation, though, a government based on such a model was already on the scene. The Roman Emperor Domitian
had initiated a policy of persecuting Christians for their refusal to worship statues of the Emperor. In those days,
John's description of the "mark of the beast" fit the loyalty-certificates which Romans were required to obtain by taking
loyalty-oaths to the Emperor. These loyalty-oaths involved either a statement that Caesar was God, or the offering of
incense to a statue of the Emperor. Christians, who refused to worship Caesar, were condemned as rebels.

The description in Revelation 13:16 of "a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads" figuratively describes the act
of willfully (that is, with one's head) and physically (that is, with one's right hand) affirming that Caesar is

Divine. The lack of a certificate would disqualify a person from making business transactions (which interlocks with
Rev. 13:17, which says, "� no one may buy or sell except those who have the mark: the name of the beast, or the
number of his name").

To the original readers of Revelation, the "Mark of the Beast" was a way of describing the certificates that affirmed that
the bearer had made a loyalty-oath to Caesar which involved the performance of an act of worship to

Caesar. Willfully taking the Mark -- that is, making the loyalty-oath to receive the certificate -- was to be strictly
avoided; those who made such an oath could expect to be "tormented with fire and brimstone" as "the smoke of their
torment goes up forever and ever" (Rev. 14:9-11).

Now that the Roman Empire is a thing of the past, should Christians worry about receiving the "Mark of the Beast"?
We should always be concerned about being allied with any organizations that promote evil, whether they turn out to be
the final ally of Satan or not. John's message in Revelation can be carefully applied not only to the Roman Empire but
to every worldly system, in every generation, which encourages Christians to worship something or someone that is not
God. The loyalty-oath certificates of the Romans might validly be called the Mark of the Beast, but so can any such
license or device, if it is required by law, it is obtained by making an act of worship toward anyone or anything other
than God, and people may be killed for refusing to take it.

We are blessed to live in a time and place in which we are not required to possess the equivalent of the ancient Roman
loyalty-certificates. We can use government-issued mailboxes, Social Security cards, phones with microchips, and so
forth, without sinning. But if a government were to prevent its citizens from buying or selling unless they used their
minds and their right hands to worship a government-sponsored image, and considered refusal to worship that image to
be a crime punishable by death, whatever signified that a person had worshipped such an image would fit the pattern of
the "Mark of the Beast." Under such circumstances, Christians would face the same sort of choice that the Christians
faced in the days when John wrote Revelation. It is possible that the loyalty-oaths which the early Christians were
tempted to make may be a sort of prototype of a loyalty-oath which will be faced by Christians in the last days.