When 666 isn't 666: blog article by Dr. Juan Stam

...καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς αὐτοῦ ἑξακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα ἕξ. "and the number is six hundred sixty six."  

Juan Stam is a theologian, professor and writer that lives in Costa Rica.  He publishes a blog with commentary on various theological and biblical subjects.  This one, I thought was worth translating and passing along.  Most of his writing is done in Spanish, so this was translated with the assistance of google translator.  He makes a few important interpretive textual points on the enigmatic and controversial "mark of the beast" in Revelation chapter 13.  The article "When 666 is not 666" is presented below for your consideration.  

666 is not 666

There is much to be said about 666, and the first is that it does not exist as such. What the Bible says is not "6-6-6" but "six hundred sixty-six," which is very different. It is not a "triple six", as would be "666" in modern arithmetic. The biblical text does not have that repetition effect, a same figure three times in a row. The emphasis does not fall on the three digits side by side, but on the sum expressed by the three original words. Whatever the interpretation, the meaning can not be in the three digits that come together but in the figure as total sum.

People of biblical times could not imagine a number like "666" because they did not know the decimal system. The number had to be "six hundred sixty-six."

In addition, the ancients had no numbers, so they had to use the letters of the alphabet for their arithmetic, starting with "A" as "1", "B" as "2", and so on. That's why they had to write the numbers, in this case "six hundred sixty-six", or, if not, put together three different letters, one for 600, one for sixty, and one for six. Those three different letters would be in Greek "JXS": the "ji" for six hundred, the "xi" for sixty and a "digama" (an archaic letter) for the six. If the mark of the beast is a tattoo, it could not have been "666" but those three letters that seem very rare.

Now, if each letter of the alphabet is a different number, then each word or name also has a number, which would be the sum total of the numerical values ​​of their respective letters. The name "Aba" would be "4" (1 + 2 + 1) or "Abba" would be 6 (1 + 2 + 2 + 1). On a wall of Pompeii there is a very romantic graffiti that reads, "I love a girl whose number is 545". However, an interesting thing happened with those maths. If I know your name, I just have to know how to read and add and I already have your number. But if you tell me a number, without knowing what name you are referring to or how many letters you have or in what language it is written, you would have no way of proceeding from the number to the corresponding name. For this and other reasons, it is almost certain that the believers in Asia Minor already knew in advance which person was referring to that number. His challenge was not to decipher the number to discover who he was, but to understand the meaning of the number and be faithful to that message.

Of the mysterious number of Revelation 13:18, there are not only many interpretations, but many different ways of interpreting it. One of these ways is to take a possible name and calculate its mathematical sum. That method has produced a large number of candidates, but most likely it is "Caesar Nero", the first Roman persecutor of the church. Curiously, the calculation results only if that name, in its Greek form, is transliterated to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet with their corresponding mathematical values. Another argument confirms this possibility. Some manuscripts have a textual variant of "616", and it turns out that that number corresponds to the Latin form of the same name, which does not have the "n" end of "Nero", thus lowering the sum by 50 points.

There is another detail that confirms this analysis. The text says that "the number of the beast is a number of (a) man" (13:18). Well, the Greek word for "beast" (thérion), converted in the same way to Hebrew letters, also adds six hundred and sixty-six. It is known that there was a graphite against Nero, based on the fact that "Nero" and "matricida" were exactly the same. Then, Revelation 13:18 would be saying, Nero and beast are one and the same thing.

However, we also have another possibility. An ancient writing, called Sibylline Oracles, has a beautiful passage that analyzes the name "Jesus" in Greek and concludes that it adds eight hundred and eighty-eight, that is, more than perfect. This is a Christian text, written shortly after the New Testament, and clearly shows that Christians used those same mathematical games. But in the light of this passage, the 666 of Revelation 13:18 might suggest that the beast claims to be absolute (777) but is always left in a sad 666. Christ, however, is perfect and more than perfect. In that sense, the Antichrist is not only an anti-Christ but a pseudo-Christ, a mockery and a parody (very ridiculous) of the only true Savior.

Of course, it is also possible that the number refers to the final Antichrist, and his mark will be a kind of tattoo on the forehead. However, the following verse, 14: 1 (the chapters are poorly divided), contrasts the mark of the beast with "the name of the Lamb and his father written on the forehead." The seal of God, of Christ and of the Spirit is a very frequent theme in the New Testament (Revelation 7: 4-8, 2 Cor 1:22, Ephesians 1:13, 4:30), and we know that it is not a mark visible or physical. So it seems that the mark of the beast will not be a tattoo either. Much less was John thinking about computers and laser machines, when he did not even know the electricity. Nor does it have to do with our modern calendar (June 6), of which John knew nothing. To invent such interpretations is to speculate and add to the Word of God (Revelation 22:18).

There is another curious thing in this passage: the text does not say that the beast "will mark all", in future time, as if it were a prediction. He says that the beast was "allowed to breathe in the image" and that "it caused all ... to be marked" (13: 15,16), in past tense, not in the future. It seems obvious that the past tense of John's visions refer to the moment when John had seen that vision. It is typical of the visions of the Apocalypse that almost always come in past tense, not future. Of course, many of John's visions are clearly future (such as Christ's coming, Armageddon, final judgment and new creation), but others clearly past or present (like the Son of Man among the candlesticks, the throne in heaven).

The visions of Revelation, of course, may be future, but they are not necessarily, much less when they are written in past or present tense. In the case of the mark of the beast, where verbs are not future, deciding whether the mark is a future literal reality or not, is a human decision to interpret the text, and does not belong to the meaning of the text itself.

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