NEWS: Oldest Known New Testament Manuscript: Number of the Beast is 616, page 3

Originally posted by Dasher
...it would be prudent at this point to bring up the fact that john was in a roman prison at the time and nero was known to be extremely vicious. further, in those days, it was common to put a name in code by adding the letter/numbers together.

to get a glimpse of who nero was, let me quote from "Civilization - Past and Present" Fourth edition, by, Scott/Foresman;
pg 143 -
"We are now indebted to Tacitus for his account of how Nero made the Christians in the capital the scapegoats for the great fire: Mockery was added to the Christians' deaths. They were covered with animal skins and torn to pieces by dogs, many were crucified or burned, and some were set afire at nightfall to serve for illumination. For the spectacle Nero offered his gardens, and he presented horse races in addition. In the dress of a charioteer he himself stood up in his sulky. Hence the victims aroused compassion, for it was not for the public good but for one man's savagery that they were being destroyed."

[2nd edit] - since 666/616 = nero's name/title in their respective languages (greek and hebrew), it is further evidence that those who were in those days knew and were expected to know (with a bit of thinking) who john was speaking of.

An excellent historically correct [for that time period] response Dasher.
Back in early 2004, a similar topic came up:
How To Add The Number Of The Beast, A Mystery Revealed

I made a couple comments in it basically describing the same reasoning but in a different way:

Biblical literalist, an amazing bunch of folks.
No consideration for for literary context or even the historical context given....strange.

The books of Daniel and Revelations are considered Apocalyptic texts, written during a period in history when the writers were under heavy scrutiny, harrassment, subjugation, and quite literally, were being put to death for being a Christian or even remotely connected to it.

Literalists tend to view, read, and interpret Revelations from a "Futurist Approach," implying that Revelations is a book of prophecies dealing with the end of the world.

The other 'academic' approach is to view, read, understand, and interpret the book of Revelations, better known as the "Preterist Approach". This view holds that Revelations is a book of prophecies that deal primarily with the period in which Revelations was written; that would be about 95+/- CE.

The audience to have recieved Revelations would have been those persecuted Christians and the books purpose would have been to offer encouragement during this time of persecution. The symbols and images would have been used so that the persecutors, the Romans, would or could not fully understand the communications that were transpiring between those Christians that were under persecution and being persecuted.

As such, to make this short, I found it very, very interesting that in Aramaic, the letters for Nero Caesar (a Roman emperor and the contested first to really and seriously persecute Christians) add up to 666.

666 = 616 = Nero

seekerof

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Seekerof]