posted on May, 7 2007 @ 02:43 PM
tom_robert......all these verses in Thessalonians and Revelation are not referring to some anti-christ world ruler of the future. These verses are
referring to Nero Caesar and the Roman empire.
Here's the best explanation of what the Mark of the Beast 666, etc, is all about......
The first readers of Revelation were told to “calculate the number of the Beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and
sixty-six” (13:18). Since Revelation was written to a first-century audience, we should expect the first-century readers to be able to calculate the
number with relative ease and understand the result. They would have had few candidates from which to choose. Notice that the number is “six hundred
and sixty-six, not three sixes.” Tim LaHaye, the popular co-author of the Left Behind series of books, misidentifies the number when he writes,
“The plain sense of Scripture tells us that it comprises the numbers: six, six, six.”2 The three Greek letters that make up the number represent
600, 60, and 6.
Ancient numbering systems used an alpha-numeric method. This is true of the Latin (Roman) system that is still common today: I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50,
C=100, D=500, M=1000. Greek and Hebrew follow a similar method where each letter of their alphabets represents a number. The first nine letters
represent 1–9.3 The tenth letter represents 10, with the nineteenth letter representing 100 and so on. Since the Book of Revelation is written in a
Hebrew context by a Jew with numerous allusions to the Old Testament, we should expect the solution to deciphering the meaning of six hundred and
sixty-six to be Hebraic. "The reason clearly is that, while [John] writes in Greek, he thinks in Hebrew, and the thought has naturally affected the
vehicle of expression."
When Nero Caesar's name is transliterated into Hebrew, which a first-century Jew would probably have done, he would have gotten Neron Kesar or simply
nrwn qsr, since Hebrew has no letters to represent vowels. “It has been documented by archaeological finds that a first century Hebrew spelling of
Nero's name provides us with precisely the value of 666. Jastrow's lexicon of the Talmud contains this very spelling.”5 When we take the letters
of Nero's name and spell them in Hebrew, we get the following numeric values: n=50, r=200, w=6, n=50, q=100, s=60, r=200 = 666. “Every Jewish
reader, of course, saw that the Beast was a symbol of Nero. And both Jews and Christians regarded Nero as also having close affinities with the
serpent or dragon. . . . The Apostle writing as a Hebrew, was evidently thinking as a Hebrew. . . . Accordingly, the Jewish Christian would have tried
the name as he thought of the name—that is in Hebrew letters. And the moment that he did this the secret stood revealed. No Jew ever thought of Nero
except as ‘Neron Kesar.’”
The fragment supports the reading of some Greek New Testament manuscripts that read 616 instead of 666. Why would someone making a copy of the
Revelation scroll make such a number change? “Perhaps the change was intentional, seeing that the Greek form Neron Caesar written in Hebrew
characters (nrwn qsr) is equivalent to 666, whereas the Latin form Nero Caesar (nrw qsr) is equivalent to 616.” A Latin copyist might have thought
that 666 was an error because Nero Caesar did not add up to 666 when transliterated into Latin. He then changed 666 to 616 to conform to the Latin
rendering since it was generally accepted that Nero was the Beast. In either case, a Hebrew transliteration nets 666, while a Latin spelling nets 616.
Nero was the “man” and either 666 or 616 was his number.
[edit on 7-5-2007 by iandavis]
[edit on 7-5-2007 by iandavis]
[edit on 7-5-2007 by iandavis]