666-where does it come from?

The 666 number is stricly connected with Satan I want to know why. I heard it comes from St John's Apocalypse but I want to know more

it is my understanding that 666 is another of those things that was hijacked
by early christianity. 999 an old Pagan symbol for life was inverted and made the "sign of the beast."

But it is just a jumber that is supposedly the mark of the beast you are supposed to have to wear it on your forehead one day to be able to eat and everything.

In the previous 6 hours there have been 666 members on AboveTopSecret.com
Think this is a coincidence?

(okay... irony alert. The Wiccan is telling Christians about their holy book)

It's a reference in Revelation, the last chapter of most Bibles:

REVELATION 13:1-18
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and his great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.
10 He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword, must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.
11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spaketh as a dragon.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads;
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that has the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

From this site:
www.studybibleforum.com...
comes the following explaination/expansion of the last verses:

Rev 13:14 And because of the signs (miracles) which he is allowed to perform in the presence of the [first] beast, he deceives those who inhabit the earth, commanding them to erect a statue (an image) in the likeness of the beast who was wounded by the [small] sword and still lived. [Deut. 13:1-5.]
Rev 13:15 And he is permitted [also] to impart the breath of life into the beast's image, so that the statue of the beast could actually talk and cause to be put to death those who would not bow down and worship the image of the beast. [Dan. 3:5.]
Rev 13:16 Also he compels all [alike], both small and great, both the rich and the poor, both free and slave, to be marked with an inscription [stamped] on their right hands or on their foreheads,
Rev 13:17 So that no one will have power to buy or sell unless he bears the stamp (mark, inscription), [that is] the name of the beast or the number of his name.
Rev 13:18 Here is [room for] discernment [a call for the wisdom of interpretation]. Let anyone who has intelligence (penetration and insight enough) calculate the number of the beast, for it is a human number [the number of a certain man]; his number is 666.

A number of Biblical scholars say that John was fingering Nero, but didn't actually want to be tossed to the gladiators and animals so he hid the name using gemantria:

www.usccb.org...
[18] Each of the letters of the alphabet in Hebrew as well as in Greek has a numerical value. Many possible combinations of letters will add up to 666, and many candidates have been nominated for this infamous number. The most likely is the emperor Caesar Nero (see the note on Rev 13:3), the Greek form of whose name in Hebrew letters gives the required sum. (The Latin form of this name equals 616, which is the reading of a few manuscripts.) Nero personifies the emperors who viciously persecuted the church. It has also been observed that "6" represents imperfection, falling short of the perfect number "7," and is represented here in a triple or superlative form.

This is fairly compelling as an argument because of the other imagery in the Book of Revelation which very specifically identifies Rome (in spite of some modern Biblical interpreters trying to make it out to be various countries including the US.)

Originally posted by stalkingwolf
it is my understanding that 666 is another of those things that was hijacked by early christianity. 999 an old Pagan symbol for life was inverted and made the "sign of the beast."

Someone's pulling your leg, there.

The '6' and '9' style of numbers come form Arabia and were popularized during the 1300's or so. The original manuscript uses the Roman style numerals which would have been 'DC' and 'LX' and 'VI' (DCLXVI)

bet555:

"Did you know WWW ... Can also mean 666 ???"

I must admin I didn't know that, strangely though... 'W' is the 23rd letter of the alphabet and 2x3 = 6... some connection maybe??

Originally posted by Klepto

bet555:

"Did you know WWW ... Can also mean 666 ???"

I must admin I didn't know that, strangely though... 'W' is the 23rd letter of the alphabet and 2x3 = 6... some connection maybe??

But on the phone keyboard it's on the 9th key...
yes... the 9th

This isn't saying exactly where 666 comes from but its still pretty cool. During the making of one of the exorcist films, the second one i think, the fax machine completely turned of and wouldn't go back on but it was printing out constant 6's

As I heard on a RE lesson and from a guy from Bytom (Silesia-PL) 6 is the number of inperfectness and 7 is the number of perfectness
But I don't know why it's 666 and not 66 or 6666

I'm less and less convinced 666 has anything really to do with Satan. If you're into doing bible code software searches the 666 can be either a skip length marker for the computer to use or I believe it may be a watermarking checksum verification procedure used to verify the authenticity of the bible.

God told the Jews not to change, add, or delete a single letter in his book to Moses or it would all be destroyed and worthless. Read the paper at the link provided, and you can see why 3 and 777 are magical numbers of the bible. Its not real magic but they help make the hidden bible code work. What the true purpose of the code is and why God put it away like that is anybody's guess. This is why the bible seems so abridged when God talks about creation. He only wrote enough story that could perfectly encode the real messages. Rather than write all the history, it was summed up here and there and condensed into the first 5 books of the bible. I'm willing to bet, that if it were unlocked, the bible code would unfold itself like a modern .zip file and become this super huge book.

www.research-systems.com...

Because of the overwhelming mathematical code and precision within the bible code matrix, it warrants some serious review and study.

Now, for the curious, someone did a bible code search for 666 and you can view it here...not intended for the religiously offended. Please bear in mind, all bible code software will turn up the same results, and this has been checked. The skip length of 666 was not used for this but the name Lustiger and the number 666 was found within his matrix. He's a real person and there are some links to St. Malachy's predictions at the bottom of the page.

www.exodus2006.com...

I will check my own software and look into the 666 skip length, that's a little difficult to do because I need a search term the computer can find at location 666. But maybe I can work backwards somehow. This stuff really needs a supercomputer.

Groupies:

The whole book of the Revelation (the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Edler) is a curious hotchpotch of Old Testment and Apocryphal Apocalyptic "end of Days" scraps written during the outbreak of the Jewish War against Rome in AD 66 (in order to give hope to the "saints") that has been re-written (and added to) so many times, the form of the original text is quite obscured.

It seems to have been originally a Jewish Messianic Apocalypse which was later Christianized to some degree, but still retains is "Dead Sea Scroll" flavouring, albeit in very bad Greek.

What is added into the margins ("marginalia") later gets copied into the body of the text so that the end result is that the book becomes longer and longer over time.

This is why there is a distinct warning at the end of the book:

WHOEVER ADDS ANYTHING TO THIS SCROLL SHALL BE ADDED TO HIM THE HORRORS AND PLAGUES MENTIONED IN THIS SCROLL....

But all these charms did not stop people from trying their hand at a little interpretation along the way as to the identity of some of the characters such as the "BEAST" etc...(a process which is still going on today in certain LAST DAYS Christian churches..)

Since the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder ("Book of Revelation") has TWO competing Gemmatrial Systems for the "name of the Beast", and was written during the 1st Jewish War against Rome (AD 66-72) the correct individual would have to fit both 616 and 666 manuscript families:

But don't forget: THE WHOLE PASSAGE OF Rev 13:13 is an INSERTED MARGINALIUM INTO THE TEXT AT THIS POINT.

(i.e. someone wrote it into the margin of the text, to try and point to what he believed was the identity of the BEAST and gradually, it got copied into the main body of the text)

Thus several ancient versions of the "Book of Revelation" (singular, by the way) show two numbering systems:

Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Ephraemi (C) and the newly discovered Papyrus "P115/POxy4499" all of which have: "616" in the place of the more familiar 666 of Codex Sinaiticus or Codex Bezae or Codex Vaticanus etc.

Significantly, Papyrus #115 also matches (616) Codex Alexandrinus and C , which are generally regarded as providing the original text of Revelation.

Deciphering the grammatical howlers in the childish Greek of the Apocalypse of Yohanon ("Book of Revelation") has been problematic for serious researchers since the book seems to be a very crude translation an originally Jewish document written in Hebrew and Aramaic (mixed like the Book of Daniel) quoting excerpts from the Plagues of Exodus, Joel, Malachi, Jeremiah, Hezekiel chapter 39, the Psalms, Deutero-Zechariah and Proto and Trito Isaiah (ch 56-66).

Also: PLEASE NOTE the specific word "Anti-Christ" does NOT appear in ANY KNOWN TEXT of the so-called Book of Revelation, despite what most "Christians" believe. It derives from the author of I, 2 and 3 John (i.e. John the Elder, whoever he was--certainly not the author of Revelation, since his Greek is so much better!)

Notice how the Marginalium is introduced : HERE IS WISDOM: that is a flag to a scholar that ["what we have here is an INSERTION" into the text !]

The Greek word SOPHIA "Widsom" (Heb: Chochmah) generally signified Kabbalistic Gemmatria (numerology) is being signalled, and it is the FLAG which introduces the Marginalium about the number of the "Beast"

QUOTE: from CODEX SINAIATICUS

Here is WISDOM:

Let he who hath Wisdom "calculate the number of the beast" for it is the number of a [son of] man, and his number is 666"

UNQUOTE


Here is the alternative version of the Greek found in Papyrus 115 and in the CODEX ALEXANDRINUS and CODEX EPHRAIMI

"Let he who hath Wisdom calculate the number of the beast for it is the number of a man, and his number is 616."

SO WHICH ONE IS THE REAL ONE?

DON'T FORGET THAT IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION WE ARE DEALING WITH A BAD TRANSLATION HERE INTO GREEK FROM ARAMAIC AND HEBREW...

The Apocalypse of Yohananon the Elder (whoever he was, but clearly someone who had first hand experience serving in the 2nd Herodian Temple Liturgy) aka the Book of Revelation, is written in the worst Greek in the New Testament, full of what are known as "Grammatical Howlers"--clearly this is a translation INTO Greek from Hebrew and Aramaic source material like the similar Apocalypic book of Daniel especially chapters 7 to 12 (both languages are found there).

Deciphering the grammatical howlers in the childish Greek of the Apocalypse of Yohanon ("Book of Revelation") has been problematic for serious researchers--it seems to quote excerpts from the 7 Daily Psalms (Tamidim) sung in the 2nd Temple Services, as well as makes image use of the socalled Exodus Plagues of Moses, the End of Days Apocalypticism of the Books of Joel, Malachi, Jeremiah, Hezekiel chapter 39, various End of Days Psalms, Deutero-Zechariah (chapters 9-12) and Proto (ch1-39) and Trito Isaiah (ch 56-66) etc. all within the context of the Day of Atonement and Rosh Hashannah held around every September in the Synagogues by Jews seeking Oracles of YHWH for the "new year".

SO TO HEBREW GEMMATRIA WE MUST TURN IF WE ARE TO MAKE SENSE OF THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST BEING THE NUMBER OF A MAN...

If we use a Hebrew Aramaic Gemmatrial system (where each Hebrew Letter has a corresponding NUMBER attached) the system works like this:

ALEPH =1 = (' )
BETH =2 =B
GIMMEL =3 =G
DALED =4 =D
HEH =5 =H
VAV =6 =V and O
TSAYIN =7 = Z
CHET =8 = CH
TET =9 = T
YUD =10 = Y or I
KAPH =20 = K
LAMED =30 = L
MEM =40 = M
NUN =50 = N
SAMEK =60 = S
Q'AYIN =70 = 'Q
PHE =80 = F
TSADEH = 90 = TZ
QUPH =100 = Q or K or hard C
RESH =200 = R
SHIN/SHIN =300 = S or SH
TAV =400 = T or TH

Since the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder (Book of Revelation) has TWO competing gemmatria for the "name of the beast", and was written during the 1st Jewish War against Rome (AD 66-72) the correct individual would presumably have to fit both 616 and 666 found in the 2 competing manuscript families for this marginal insertion...

The Roman Emperor NERO fits the bill nicely (he was the infamous sadistic but "Divine" Emperor-Caesar of Rome in AD 66 when the Revolt in Judaea broke out and used to burn Jews (i.e. Jewish Messianic Christians) in Rome in his gardens by dipping them in tar so they'd be able to light up the courtyard better!)

The Emperor Nero's hidden "gemmatrial" (i.e. Kaballistic-numerological) name in Hebrew Letters (with the letter VAV used for LONG O) would have been either written in Hebrew letters as: N R O N Q S R (=666, add them up) = this is the preferred version as spoken by the Greeks

or else as:

N R O Q S R (i.e. 616).

NERO was probably the original intent of the writer, but the "Book of Revelation"was re-written so many times in its long literary history, (e.g. in 96 AD (re-edited) with another Emperor (Nero-Domitian) in mind, and the text was applied to every succeeding generation where "persecution of the Elect" was in effect.)

Despite the "rhetoric of hope" for the "Elect" in the Book of Revelation which was meant to strengthen the resolve of those fighting the "Beast" contrary to the hopes of the writer, Jerusalem did not descend from the sky as promised, and 900,000 Palestinian Jews lost their lives in a war which, according to Josephus, should not have been ever fought in the first place...

Thanks, Amadeus!

I admit to being a teeny bit skeptical when first reading your message, but I did check around and yes, did have confirmed that the Book of Revelation is indeed badly written (in the original) and in a very "childish" form of Greek.

"Peculiar" is the way that at least one person described the grammar.

I can confirm that I've seen the usage of the Hebrew Gematria before in explaining that Nero was apparently the intended target.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

not exactly on topic, but if we can explain what it means maybe we can explain where it comes from....

Hi Byrd:

Thanks for taking the trouble to verify some of my statements. I wish there were more people like you on these litle threadlets....

Most people on these threads (when reading over my material) merely shrug their shoulders in disbelief thinking I make stuff up---and I deliberately word things on these threads to get people's dander up, in case you hadn't noticed !

The "prophetic application" of the strange apocalyptic material found in the Greek MSS of the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder (aka the so-called Book of Revelation) to the 1st Jewish War of AD 66 (i.e. The Elect against the Beast etc.) against Rome is called PRETERIST by the way (from the Latin word: PRAETER meaning "already" in the sense of already done).

And as you probably have guessed I am a PRETERIST, who believes that the Book was written during the Jewish War, and can be applied to that time in detail (ending in AD 72).

The book seems to have been intended (originally at least) to instill a sense of direction and hope to the early Jewish-Christian Messianic community who were caught up in the Revolt waiting for deliverance from OCCUPATION BY ROME (as was R. Yehoshua bar Yosef, but look how that turned out...!)- It seems therefore to have been a very POLITICAL BOOK and for that reason was widely regarded in the West (read ROME) as heretical and barely got voted in by the Councils---not until after 485 AD was this book even included in the western canon.

Preterism: in other words, the "prophecies" in the book have "already" come to pass and served their original purpose----so no need to apply the BEAST to anyone living today. It's all ancient history as they say.

But the point of the book---the long hoped for end result of the book---of course, never materialised--alas.

It is sort of like the made up scene on the mountain top during a thunderstorm (i.e. the so-called Transfiguration pericope of Marck chapter 9) immediately following the "Jesus" prediction that there were some standing in front of him who 'would not taste Death" until they saw the Son of man seated at the Right Hand of the Power. coming in the Glory of his Kingdom, with Myriads of his Holy Ones with him..."--which never came true and cause many people to fall away from believing he was The Prophet Like Unto Moses sent by YHWH....

But "symbolic-prophetic-wisdom" texts like these can be re-applied and re-applied over and over again to successive generations of believers (that's the beauty of all that curious "pagan" apocalypic end of days imagery language---you can even apply it to anyone you want---even Abraham Lincoln if you felt like it --and some people do, by the way).

The imagery and general format of the Book of Revelation seems to revolve around the twice daily TAMIDIM hymns sung in the 2nd Temple of Herod (Saturday through Friday e.g. Psalms 24, 48, 82, 94, 81, 93, 92)---and there is a suggestion of Rosh Hashannah (ram's horn trumpet blows) issuing in the Proclamation of the Word of YHWH for the coming year.

Take some time to read these particular psalms and circle the words which have a parallel in the book---you will be shocked to see how many imagery parallels are there.

You simply cannot separate the Book of Revelation from the liturgy of the 2nd Temple---think about all that preistly chanting and harps and the 24 levites dressed in 2nd temple priestly garments etc. and waaaay too many exact 2nd temple symbols that are wrapped up into this text to be overlooked....

I only mention all of this Jewish Ritual imagery is rarely recognised or ever talked about among "Christians" ----naturally---and since you seem to be in the habit of looking things up to verify my claims, I thought I'd give yoiu some homework to do......!.

The Book of Revelations refers to present and future events to be sure. Exactly what those future events are has been a source of speculation since the book was first read.

As the topic of this thread regards 666 (or any number or word(s) originally written that has come forward to us as 666) I'll focus my comments on this.

I am not a Greek or Hebrew reader nor do I claim to be. I am viewing the KJV with side-notes from others.

I believe too much emphasis is lain upon the number itself. Like so many aspects of the Bible, the message oft time becomes lost in the minutia. This is akin to attempting to discover the source and exact cause of an injury whilst the patient lay dying.

However, to follow what Amadeus has posted I find at 13:18 (NKJA) a direct reference to �here is wisdom.� Based upon Amadeus' rendition or even reading this as a bolded or footnoted statement this easily can be read as an insight to discover the name of the beast.

Polycarp (John's student/disciple) explained this number as contained in the Greek letters of Lateinos (L being thirty; A, one; T, three hundred; E, five; I, ten; N, fifty; O, seventy; S, two hundred.)

From the Latin/Roman viewpoint these numbers would have been written as Roman numerals. This again is minutia. The message is clearly that a mark recognizable as meaning the beast will (as stated at 13:16-17) be required.

no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name

Pretty clear message.

The remaining portion of this message regarding what the mark will be is unclear and causes much discomfort and speculation.

Rev 14:9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,
Rev 14:10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

NuTroll posted links to a web site postulating the numerology thesis that this number (666) has special significance to George Bush. Personally I don't buy it. The message gets lost in such arguments.

well if 666 also means WWW then explain this then most websites on the net start with www

The Pope takes for himself the title: "Vicarius Filii Dei" which is Latin for Vicar of the Son of God.(15) If you translate each letter of the Pope's title into it's Roman numeral equivalent, the sum equals 666. Look:

V = 5 in Roman numerology

i = 1

c = 100

a = 0

r = 0

i = 1

u = 5 (the letters V and U have the same value; see any encyclopedia

s = 0 under "alphabet")

F = 0

i = 1

L = 50

i = 1

i = 1

D = 500

e = 0

i = 1 Grand total = 666
Just a possibility

Hi PublicGadfly:

Here's a little background for all of you hanging on to this thread.

The words "here is Wisdom" is the beginning of the footnote (or "marginalium" of Rev 13:13 if you want the technical term)

You can see at a glance that the whole paragraph about the Number of the Beast actually interrupts the flow of what is written in the Greek immediately before and after the verse, and can be removed with no real loss of meaning.

Why do you say the reference to the beast is clear, when you can see it is coded? Also why would you assume that the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder (whoever he was---apparently the aged Jerusalemite Presbuteros who apparently had met "Iesous" in the flesh (possibly one of the 70--certainly not Yohanon bar Zavdai--or John the son of Zebedee, who was killed by Herod in the 40s with his brother) who preached as a very old man to Polycarp when Polycarp was still a teenager some time in 95 AD).

Certainly Yohanon the Elder was a Levite in the 2nd temple to judge from his intimate knowledge of 2nd Temple litury (and the city of Ephesus actually has TWO different statues of saints named "John" standing next to each other, both calling themselves "dedicated to John", but both different John's)

The "mark on the right hand or the forehead" is a clear reference to the Mysteries of Mithras, whose inititates were branded generally on the wrists and sometimes on the forehead.

The Roman Mystery Religion of "Mithraism" was the main Competitor to Christianity and is older than Christianity by several hundred years (the worship of Mithras as the "Saviour of the World" the "Mediator between Heaven and Earth" and the "Final Judge of the Dead at the End of Time" etc. was introduced into Rome by Pompey in the 80s BC having been brought westward from Iran-Persia by Cilician Pirates out of Tarsus, the home town of Saul of Tarsus (=Paul).

The Roman Emperors were mainly Mithraic (as were most Roman Soldiers, since it did not allow women into their ranks) especially after the time of Augustus (until the middle of the 4th century AD) even Constantine was a follower of Sol Invictus, whose cult blended in with Mithra (we still see statues of Sol Invictus--the Unconquorable Sun--bowing down before Mithras in the iconography of the 2nd century AD)

The author of The Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder --whoever he was---(the word is derived from the Greek: apo = to remove + Kalups = "Veil", hence "reveal" or literally "remove the veil") sees the growing Mithraic cult among the Roman male middle class throughout the Empire as a direct threat to his own competitive "Mysteries of Christ"---Christianity is actually just another of more than 20 Mystery Saviour-god religions, many of which use bread and wine in their ceremonies to represent the body and blood of their god (e.g. Mithras) and almost all have a "eucharist" meal (e.g. Mithras) or banquet, celebrating the passing from "death to life" of the god who is resurrected.

We see Mystery Language placed into the mouth of Iesous himself ("Behold, it is given to you my disciples the Key to the Mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven...but to those outside, everything is expressed in Parables..")

And even Saul of Tarsus uses Mystery language (he was from Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia after all, which was also the home of Stoic Philosophy by the way !) : "Behold I tell you a MUSTERION: we shall not all sleep: but we shall all be changed...in a moment...in the twinkling of an eye... at the last Trumpet..."

What is interesting is that one could be an Initiate of several of these pagan Roman Empire Mystery religions without fear of reprisals--the exception of course being the Mysteries of Christ which, like its Jewish ancestry, brooked NO COMPETTION.

Thus we see the Mysteries of Eleuseius (i.e. Demeter and Kore, which celebrates the Spring overcoming the Winter, i.e. the birth of the sun god), and the Mysteries of Orpheus, or the Ecstatic Mysteries of the bi-sexual god Dionysius, or the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris (the latter being the Judge of the Dead and the Underworld in Egypt as well as being the god of the Resurrection), related to the the Mysteries of Hapi-Osiris (i.e. Serapis), the Mysteries of Zagreus, or the Mysteries of Zeus-Piter (i.e. Iupiter), and the Mysteries of the Resurrection god Tammuz or Attannuzi (see the book of Hezekiel, "behold they are weeping for Tammuz !") sometimes called Adonis in Greek (a corrupted form of Attanuz) and a dozen others.

In the Apocalypse, we hear mention of the "white stone of the proselyte whose name only the Initiate knows..." which is also from the Mysteries of Eleusius and Miithras, and several other Mystery Religion motifs that the author is trying to adapt to his own Messianic usage or go the other route and villify altogether, like the Brand of the Beast.

Food for thought...but much more to be said...!

Amadeus
You can see at a glance that the whole paragraph about the Number of the Beast actually interrupts the flow of what is written in the Greek immediately before and after the verse, and can be removed with no real loss of meaning.

Why do you say the reference to the beast is clear, when you can see it is coded? Also why would you assume that the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder (whoever he was---apparently the aged Jerusalemite Presbuteros who apparently had met "Iesous" in the flesh (possibly one of the 70--certainly not Yohanon bar Zavdai--or John the son of Zebedee, who was killed by Herod in the 40s with his brother) who preached as a very old man to Polycarp when Polycarp was still a teenager some time in 95 AD).

The "mark on the right hand or the forehead" is a clear reference to the Mysteries of Mithras, whose inititates were branded generally on the wrists and sometimes on the forehead.

(fascinating historical side-track btw, thanks :up

Amadeus
What is interesting is that one could be an Initiate of several of these pagan Roman Empire Mystery religions without fear of reprisals--the exception of course being the Mysteries of Christ which, like its Jewish ancestry, brooked NO COMPETTION.

In the Apocalypse, we hear mention of the "white stone of the proselyte whose name only the Initiate knows..." which is also from the Mysteries of Eleusius and Miithras, and several other Mystery Religion motifs that the author is trying to adapt to his own Messianic usage or go the other route and villify altogether, like the Brand of the Beast.

Fascinating, I appreciate your knowledge and time to post it.

Back �to the thread�- it seems that ��666 is merely representative of ��??

I believe it is a writer's tool or in this instance a speaker's tool perhaps mis-written over time to point to a message. The message is the important aspect.

Whether Zoroaster or Baal originated any of these thoughts is historisity only. The message that Jesus was portraying to John (or any name one wishes to insert) was the thing of importance.

Subjugation to the state (beast) by any other name is the same. Whether a 616, a 666 or a flag is the symbol. The message seems clear to me �that at the time of the beast subjugated mankind will be marked OUTWARDLY.� To receive this mark and therefore enjoy the fruits of society (if even regulated harshly) one's soul must be surrendered. Even at the time of authorship of this set of passages this was no new concept.

I additionally have thoughts regarding the statements relating to Nero and the like. As they do not come near fitting into this thread I will pass on them. However Amadeus as you are assuredly much more learned and knowledgeable in this area than I it is my suggestion that you start a thread on that very subject.