Uh oh. Shut down the machinery. Blow the siren. Step away from the handle. Put your safety gear on.
You’ve been doing it wrong. All this time. It’s not 666. It’s 616.
Oh my god – well no wonder then! No wonder it didn’t work! No wonder we’re still here and not there. No wonder it never got airborne. No wonder the gell didn’t set. No wonder the plan never came to fruition. So that’s two thousand years down the crapper.
Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, told Canada’s National Post, “This is a very nice piece to find. Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast.” But, if 616 is correct, according to Revelation 22:18, there’s now a lot of people that brought the Bible’s curses upon themselves, and those foolish enough to have repeated their false teachings.
It’s a very grim outlook for those people. Very grim indeed. I hope their passports are up to date.
If I remember correctly, the penalty for being a false prophet is stoning or some other painful death.
Comment submitted:
@1, Except in America, where the reward is a shiny new church to call your own!
Of course, it’s not such a big shock if you think that the rather imaginative writing in question is less a literal prophecy about the end of the world than an example of hiding potentially-dangerous politics in figurative language. Of course, that would pretty much eliminate most fundamentalist evangelical group activities….
Of course, one could also consider reading one’s comments more carefully to avoid repeating phrases. Of course!
Poppy cock. The number of the beast is 666. My proof? Steve Harris wrote it. Iron Maiden sang it therefore I believe it.
This story seems to be old news:
Beast’s real mark devalued to ’616′
Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast
It is interesting that one of the related stories linked at the bottom of the first article is ‘Wife of evangelist Oral Roberts dies’.
I would like to see a follow-up article on whether Peter Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan, has indeed switched over to using 616.
Actually, both numbers are “legitimate” in that instances of both can be found in manuscripts which are, scholars tell us, authentic. This has been known in academic circles for generations. That some believe curses can be invoked with either of the two (actually a numerical “code” for the emperor’s name) brings a certain hilarity to the fore.
The usual interpretation has been that 666 (or 616) was in effect an anagram of “Caesar Nero” (and the text suggests that the knowledgeable reader could figure it out).
Does this mean we’ll have to stop accusing evangelicals of obsessing about sick, sick six?
Wait, there’s more! In Roman numerals, 666 is DCLXVI, and 616 is DCXVI. It’s a Christmas revelation: no L!
Oh, man, now I have to get all these tattoos redone!
Somebody mentioned “Number of the Beast?
The minute I read the first line:
I was instantaneously reminded of W. H. Auden’s “Stop all the Clocks” poem.
@ #6:
This numbers business in manuscripts of that time was simple code – anagrams,. if you will – so the answer to your question ought to be “yes,” but I doubt fundies will very readily give up such a juicy bit of nonsense.
#7 Bad Jim:
You. Go. Sit. In. A. Corner.
The people in Michigan’s Bible Belt around Grand Rapids are no doubt in a tizzy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_code_616
Ancient manuscripts? Pah! REAL Christians know that ONLY the King James Version, in 16th century English, is the divinely inspired infallible word of God. All that ancient Hebrew and Greek is a commie plot. Or something.
Yeah. You can prove anything with chronology.
According to Engels, F. (1883): The Book of Revelation (yes, that very Engels) it is indeed a mysticistic transcription of the words “Emperor Nero” into numbers, and you get 666 or 616 depending on your use of greek “Neron Kaisar” or latin “Nero Caesar” respectively. If you note one of these versions as hebrew letters and then do your mystic (there was a formal code of doing that), you get the following values:
n = 50
o = 200
r = 6
n = 50
k = 100
s = 60
r = 200
Greek version, sum 666. In the latin version the second n would be missing, sum 616.
Here is a link. I recommend it not only for this ancient number game, but also for a very fascinating analysis of the bizarre allegories in Revelation: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/book-revelations.htm