Maybe it's 999?

Poststructural Pub
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Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it’s a devilish 616)
By Tom Anderson
01 May 2005


A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it’s actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: “This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people’s names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula.”

The Book of Revelation is traditionally considered to be written by John, a disciple of Jesus; it identifies 666 as the mark of the Antichrist. In America, the fundamentalist Christian right often use the number in sermons about the coming Apocalypse.

They and satanists responded coolly to the new “Revelation”. Peter Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan, based in New York, said: “By using 666 we’re using something that the Christians fear. Mind you, if they do switch to 616 being the number of the beast then we’ll start using that.”

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=634679

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There have been known manuscripts with 616 for a long time.

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Interesting article, but I would submit these points to ponder –

666 base-10 is 3030 base-6, and 30 is the traditional journalist’s indication of “The End.” 3030 – double thirty – twice the end? – think about it.

666 in base-4 is 22122, which reads the same backwards as forwards, as does the expression ‘DEVIL LIVED’; and it’s 1010011010 in binary, which is a lot of zeros and ones.

Furthermore, 666 in base-7 is H2 in base-20, clearly a reference to Heinrich Himmler. Or maybe Hubert Humphrey.

666 is DCLXVI in roman numerals, and it is the only base-10 integer that uses all of the roman numerals under 1,000 in descending, consecutive order, clearly symbolic of the decline (descent) of the Roman Empire after Caligula. And DCLXVI both starts with the same letter and has the same number of characters as “Dallas.” Coincidence? I think not, especially when you consider that the digits of 11/22 (date of the assassination of President Kennedy)add to 6, and if each of the letters in FBI are shifted forward 6 letters you get LHO, the initials of Lee Harvey Oswald. OSWALD has 6 letters. Oswald shot from the sixth floor of the building where he worked. The triple shift of letters from FBI to LHO can be expressed as 666.

616, on the other hand, has none of these endearing characteristics, although 4616 is BAG in base-20, and 6616 is base-20 GAG.

In the interests of academic integrity, I acknowledge my dept to Dr. Irving Matrix for some of the above information.