The Number of the Beast

[mintogrubb]

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.

Comments

[smartykjmn15]

I hope you know the reaction to this post could get ugly, or be entirely ignored because Revelation has been brought up several times before in this community. I will try to be helpful if that is what you are seeking.

I'm not entirely sure of your current knowledge, or how you interpret scripture, but I personally (as well as many of my siblings in Christ in this community) interpret the book of Revelation as a series of visions (read: dreams) rather than a concise literal interpretation. As such, the book of Revelation read and interpreted through the rest of scripture is about Christ's defeat of Satan, and the marriage of Christ to the Church, among other things.

I know I'm not scholarly enough to properly answer the first three questions, but the significance of the number is that it is a triplet of 6's. 7 is commonly referenced as a number of perfection: God's number. 3 is the number of the trinity, and also a number of completion. 6 is one less than 7, and so does humanity fall short of God's Complete perfection.

[mintogrubb]

I hope you know the reaction to this post could get ugly, or be entirely ignored because Revelation has been brought up several times before in this community. I will try to be helpful if that is what you are seeking.

I shall look among the links, then. but thank you for coming in with some serious input. I think I can live with a bit of ugliness, though.

but the significance of the number is that it is a triplet of 6's.
Only if you are using modern mathematical concepts, like the principle of place.

In Latin it would be DCLXVI, but i cannot do hebrew or greek to show you what it would be like in those scripts.

you see, the ancient peoples who wrote the bible had letters for numbers, and numbers were letters as well.

If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number.

Ok, that is how I read it. but we have people here who are professionals...

Greek numbering

[gtrnvox]

i cannot do hebrew or greek to show you what it would be like in those scripts

In Greek you would write 666 as ΧΞC or ΧΞF (except in uncial characters and with a supralinear mark); i.e. 600 + 60 + 6. The manuscript evidence has both the three character number and the fully written εξακοσιοι εξηκοντα εξ. According to Irenaeus there was a variant in which "the number sixty" (represented by Ξ) "was easily expanded into the letter Iota of the Greeks" and that only "some" manuscripts contained that reading (see Haer. 5.30.1 and Eusebius' Hist. eccl. 5.8.5).

So, you are correct that the number in Greek is not a triplet.

[amergina]

Not apropos to the topic, but every time someone uses a Jesus is a hippie icon, a piece of the liberal inside me dies.

*sigh*

[mintogrubb]

we can't have that, now, can we, Ann?

I shall change it immediately and pray for the restoration of your liberal tendencies and attitudes.

bnut seriously, i am told that there are articles here about this. yet I do not see Revelation in the tags ( Genesis, yes, but that don't help!)
Can u point me 2 a link plz?

[amergina]

I have no idea where the posts are. The problem is that there are something like 10,000 posts, and not that many of them are tagged. :-/

[catholic_heart]

Well if I knew that was the case I would have started using hippie Jesus icons long ago :-P

[gunslnger]

1. The beast's description is reminiscent of the description in Daniel 7 of the 4 kingdoms that would conquer the [known] world. It combines features of the first 3 beasts to describe it, as Daniel didn't say what his fourth beast looked like. But you need to look at Daniel's vision and explanation of the vision in order to fully understand what is going on here in Revelation

[gunslnger]

Because a lot of it cannot be mapped to his present time and a lot of it is described specifically as events to happen later.

[cmaried]

Yay for amillenialism...I think.

That's how I interpret Revelation, as well. Nero may have been powerful, blasphemed God's Temple by sacrificing a pig at the altar, persecuted and murdered Christians, and worshiped the god of Fortresses (war), but he surely didn't have a global village wrapped around his finger. Also, the world didn't consider him to be a deity. Maybe some Romans did, but not anyone else.

[pastorlenny]

The weight of gold that came to Solomon yearly was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold... -II Chronicles 9:13

[mintogrubb]

How exactly does that bear on to this?
We have a figure of 666, but I do not see how it relates.
Most scholars don't even mention Solomons talents of gold, so how do they connect?

[flipao_maria]

1) My belief is that the Sea Beast is imperial Rome and in particular the Emperor Nero. Especially when it says "the whole world was astonished and followed the beast" and "Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?" Those phrases are just reminiscent of the fact that Rome had a lot of power and it likely saw itself as the greatest empire on the earth. Nero made war against the saints, that is he was the first imperial authority to persecute Christians on a massive scale

[raphaelanwar]

I agree.

[mintogrubb]

Ditto - but what ios with this 666 talents of king solomon in the OT? does this have any bearing as well?

[raphaelanwar]

Possibly. The writer of Revelation was undoubtedly drawing on many sources and possibly intended to allude to something by echoing the previous texts.