bible mark of the beast is not 666 it 600606, page 2

reply to post by the_watcher

Even during the times when early copies of Revelation were circulating, there was confusion about whether the number meant by its author was 666 or 616. This is because all the Greek copies were handwritten, and the middle number of the three letters in these copies denoting the number was sometimes interpreted as iota (10) and sometimes as xi (60), the confusion arising because the appearance of these letters is similar, thus creating the gematria value of either 616 or 666. Three years ago, Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, announced to the world
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his belief that the number was 616 because the fragment of the earliest known copy that he had examined under a microscope showed the middle letter as iota. This conclusion is fallacious because even earlier copies yet to be found might have xi as the middle letter, not iota.

Another argument supporting 666 is that, as the author of Revelation was a Greek Jew, he would have thought of Nero, widely believed to be what the Beast symbolized, as Neron Kesar, the Hebrew form whose gematria number value is 666. [See Frederic W. Farrar, The Early Days of Christianity (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1882), 471.]

View the three letters xi (600), iota (10 and stigma (6) in the fragment here:
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You may think that it is now impossible to know which number the author of Revelation meant, as we are unlikely to discover its 'first edition' or be able to recognise it as such even if we did. Here is an argument which favours 666 rather than 616: compare the two letters iota and xi and ask yourselves this question: what is more probable - that the letter iota would be misread as xi or that the letter xi would be misread as iota. It is clear that the latter is the more likely because, if carelessly rendered, it could be read as iota, whereas the simpler letter iota is not likely to be ever misread as the more complex xi. This means that the author of Revelation meant the number of the Beast to be 666, not 616, and that the version examined three years ago contains a copied error even though it is the earliest known copy. We shall probably never know for sure. But don't be taken in by fallacious claims (uncritically repeated) whose truth depends on the shaky assumption that the earliest copy yet discovered was identical to the original version.