![]() For the Latins are they who at present bear rule.” 4 In Against Heresies, he wrote, “Although certain as to the number of the name of the Antichrist, yet we should come to no rash conclusions as to the name itself, because this number is capable of being fitted to many names.” He favored the word teitan, a variant of titan, among other reasons because it “is composed of six letters, each syllable containing three letters.” But he also suggested Lateinos, which likewise “has the number six hundred and sixty-six and it is a very probable, this being the name of the last kingdom. One of the first Christian writers to apply it to Revelation 13:18 was Irenaeus (c. ![]() “The earliest European manuscript known to contain Hindu numerals was written in Spain in 976.” 3 From the Church Fathers to the High Middle AgesĬalculating the number of a name through letter-number equivalence is known as gematria. People who lived in New Testament times knew nothing about the Hindu-Arabic system that we now possess, which was introduced during the Middle Ages. Inherited by their Roman conquerors, it also became the basis for Roman numerals, which are sometimes still used today. For them too, its letters represented numerals. The ancient Greeks also adopted it, modifying it to produce their alpha-beta, the first “true” alphabet. They had derived it from the linguistically related Phoenicians, who called it the ālep bet. Letters of the Semitic alefbet, used in the writing system of the Jews, also served as numerals. The ancients did not possess a special script for writing numerals. Moreover, the Novum Testamentum Graece (28th ed.) refers to it as a variant reading. The great antiquity of the Chester Beatty papyrus is nevertheless of compelling importance as evidence for the early use of the abbreviation ch xi S. 1 This is a minority reading because most manuscripts have the numbers written out in full as hexakosioi hexēkonta hex (six-hundred sixty six). That papyrus contains the reading arithmos gar anthrōpou estin estin de ch xi S (for it is the number of a human being and it is 666). Most ancient manuscripts nevertheless have 666, including a very early Chester Beatty papyrus from the third century A.D. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man : His number is 666.”įor some researchers, the number 666 itself has been problematic as a few Greek manuscripts contain the number 616 and one has 615. Over the centuries, many writers tried to interpret the riddle presented by Revelation 13:17, 18 (NKJV): “No one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Most of those predecessors, though not all, were Protestants. Seventh-day Adventists inherited much of what they believe about biblical prophecy from their theological predecessors. While there are valid reasons to interpret it as the papal title Vicarius Filii Dei, as several Seventh-day Adventist writers have done over the years, others have viewed it as a triple six indicative of a Satanic trinity. Building on different interpretative traditions, there have been two major views among Seventh-day Adventists on the number of the beast (the number 666) in Revelation 13:17, 18.
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