Chili

You right. It is all metaphor except when indicated otherwise such as in John 6:55 where it says "my body is real food and my blood is real drink."

Revelation is futuristic only because we never got there yet.

Photocrat

Toto is correct here. The reason some believe it to refer to Nero is because of the variant number 616 in some manuscripts--different renderings of Nero's name can add up to either 666 or 616.

Dina Noun

That, and also the fact that the whore of Bablyon - which is said to actually be a city - is best understood as being Rome. So 666 and the whore of Babylon go together very well in terms of being Caesar Nero and Rome.

IonMic

Its my belief that the Whore of Babylon is on fact the Roman Catholic Church and 666 is the Pope. I once read some dubious websites that purported claims that words that were commonly associated with the pope oin latin.hebrew and Greek could be summed to equal 666 using roman numerals like so. I found it humorous that someone had gone to these lengths to try an prove the pope is the 666 as spoken in revelations.


VICARIUS FILII DEI
THE LITERAL MEANING: VICARIUS - substituting for, or in place of
FILII - means son
DEI - means God


V = 5 F = no value D = 500
I = 1 I = 1 E = no value
C = 100 L = 50 I = 1
A = no value I = 1 -------------
R = no value I = 1 501
I = 1 --------------
U = 5 53
S = no value
---------------
112

112 + 53+ 501 = 666

EthnAlln

I'm glad you found it humorous. So often people of a chiliastic bent of mind are utterly lacking in humor; and it is funny. Many Protestants see the Roman Church in the reference to the "seven hills." Of course, the Rome referred to (coded as "Babylon" in the book of Revelation) was not the Rome of the Catholic Church. It was the Rome of Caesar.

The computation you quoted caused Catholics, some five hundred years ago, to riposte by showing that "MARTINUS LUTERUS" also adds up to 666. You can also find 6..6..6 in the bar codes in all shops; this fact leads to all kinds of hysteria among the more volatile end-timers. They could take comfort from reading about how many times the Beast has appeared in the past. In "War and Peace" Tolstoy has his lead character Pierre Bezukhov learning that Napoleon is the beast. You get this by writing

l'empereur Napoleon

then letting the letters a -- i stand for 1 -- 9, omit j (since it isn't distinguished from i in the ancient alphabets) and the letters from k on stand for 10 -- 160, increasing by 10 each time. But you have to replace the "e" in "le" that is elided as an apostrophe.

And, after all, Revelation 9:11 does say that the angel/king of the Abyss is "Apollyon," doesn't it. Apollyon---Napoleon: what could be clearer?

Well, lots could be clearer. My Greek New Testament gives the number in Rev. 13:18 as "hexakosioi hexekonta hex," which is definitely 666. A footnote indicates that this is the reading of some of the manuscripts. Others have "tessarakonta" (40) instead of "hexekonta" (60), so it would be 646 by their reading. Still others have "deka" (10), which would make it 616, although in that case, I would have expected "hex kaideka" rather than "deka hex".

credoconsolans

Glad this info is out and about because the new 'Omen' movie is coming out and the little kid is going to have the old 666 tattoo and people are going to start freaking out all over again.

k_smith123

I believe there is significant support for this interpretation if Revelation is viewed as allegory related to the "Jewish” Revolt of 66CE. In Book 3, chapter 4, paragraph 2 of Josephus' Wars of the Jews, Josephus states that the three Roman legions which were sent against the rebels contained 18 cohorts and it is natural to assume that these 18 cohorts were divided equally among the three legions and thus "666" can be viewed as a representation of these cohorts. What gives this interpretation significant support is the fact that in Book 5, chapter 13, paragraph 3 of Wars, Josephus claimed to have received what appeared to witnesses as a "fatal wound" to the head while he was with the Roman armies surrounding Jerusalem.

[(I believe that Josephus hid Christian involvement in the Jewish Revolt and thus saved many Christians from later persecutions and for this reason he was portrayed in the allegoric Gospels as Joseph of Arimathea--the owner of the “empty tomb”. Also, note that “…count the number…” in verse 13:18 of Rev. is expressed in Greek as “psephizo arithmos” while Joseph of Arimathea is expressed in Greek as “ioseph arimathaia”. In this form of ancient allegory phonetically similar words were intended to represent the same ideas. (see Plato’s Cratylus)]

Further support for “666” as a metaphor for Roman legions is found in the 16th Century Gospel of Barnabas verse 21:12 in which the “demons” which were identified by the Gospel authors as “Legion” are enumerated as amounting to “Six thousand six hundred and sixty-six.”

There is actually even deeper meanings involved here that are only clear if we also examine the works of Josephus as allegory, but since my posts usually aren't taken seriously, I will not waste time trying to explain them unless I am specifically asked to.

Mosor

Catholics (including East Orthdox before the split) were aware that Revelations referred to the persecutions under Nero and that the profecies had already been fullfilled. The Eastern bishops therefore wanted to exclude the text from the canon but the West felt they still had teaching value.

I think alot of grief could have been avoided if they decided to drop it. At the very least we wouldn't have fundies acting like Chicken Little all the time.

EthnAlln

You are right, k! I had never noticed that before. "ho ekhon noun, psephisato ton arithmon" is the Greek phrase. It means, "he who has a mind, let him count the number." For the Greekless readers here, note that "psephizo" ("I count") is related to "he psephos," meaning "pebble." The middle voice of it, "psephizomai" means "I vote," (literally, more like, "I get myself a pebble"), since they used pebbles for voting, but also for counting on counting boards.

EthnAlln

Just saw an ad for this movie on TV last night. The lead actors were really "in your face" to the fundies, proudly stating that the movie would be released on 6/6/06. I cheered as I watched. And it's going to be even more fun watching the televangelists get their knickers in a twist over this movie.