(12 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)
Loading...As I hope you know, I try to keep my personal politics out of the blog. I also hope I succeed, but some of you may think not… But I do try. It’s not that I do not have strong political convictions. On the contrary, I am passionately political and will go to the mat for my views. BUT, I want the blog to be open and welcoming to all people, whatever their political views (or religious views or any other kinds of views). We can all be interested in early Christianity, and our politics don’t need to enter into it.
And unlike most of the people I know who have strong political views, I really do try to see “the other side,” and to realize that there are very, very good people with views different from mine. Also unlike most people, I often appreciate and get a very good laugh out of jokes poked at views that I actually take very seriously. But it’s always good to laugh, even at ourselves.
I say that as a preface to this request for humorous suggestions – or serious ones, if you prefer – about how to construe the number of the beast, 666. As many of you noticed, I received a rather naughty suggestion last week, and I was even naughtier for posting it. But it was too good to turn down. It simply said:
F: 6th letter = 6
O: 15th letter = 1+5 = 6
X: 24th letter = 2+4 = 6
So I guess Fox News is Antichrist’s own Network !
Ha! I think that’s a good one. Here’s another one. My students who take my Introduction to the New Testament course sometimes tell me that they don’t think it’s an accident that the phone number for the Department of Religious Studies at UNC — famous (or infamous) for teaching historical and philosophical views that many students find challenging – is 962-5666. What does that say about our nefarious existence as a department?!? 🙂
So, I’m interest in any humorous (or serious, OK!) suggestions about 666. When I was teaching at Rutgers in the mid-80s, some liberal democrats suggested that it was not by chance that the president at the time had six letters in each of his three names, Ronald Wilson Reagan, 6-6-6,! My students tended to be Republican, but they thought that was pretty funny.
So, do you have any good ones? Let us know. All political and religious positions are welcome, so long as they are not abusive and meant to harm anyone. Those that are, I won’t post.
And I make this request realizing that it may end up being a big mistake!!! But it may be good! We’ll see.
I have a few in mind now (my New Testament class at University of Michigan-Flint had a fun in class exercise where we all decided to come up with a bunch, not all the most appropriate).
DCLXVI — I give you the Roman Numeral of the Beast
6, ugh I forget — The Number of the Blonde Beast
666-999-HELL — The Fun Time of the Beasts (the lesser known sequel to the classic Disney film)
999 — the number of the Aussie Beast
Apologizing in advance for this one lol:
696 — The Beast of the Erotic Sea
My devout Christian computer programmer father just suggested “1010011010” The Binary Number of the Beast.
Got more, but I think those are my favorites.
Likewise I think probably every math/compsci/physics geek-oriented mailing list I’ve every been on has, at one time or another, gone through a round of 666-play. A few examples that come to mind are:
6.50128967… = The Natural Log of the Beast
25.806975.. = The Square Root of the Beast (Although, I suppose, since this is the root of all evil, this would more accurately be “The Number of the Love of Money”)
0.666 = The number of the millibeast
666i = The number of the Imaginary Beast
1232 = the number of the OctalBeast
1/666 = the denominator of the beast
665.99 = The number of the Retail Beast
Although my favorite is probably:
-2*SIN(666) = [1 + sqrt(5)] / 2 (i.e. The Golden Ratio or Mean )
(But then, as St Augustine wrote, in De Genesi ad Litteram:
“The good Christian should beware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the Devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.” 😉 )
Ha!
If Satan’s a snake he probly says ssssssix.sssssix.ssssssixsssss. – Or maybe he was simply going about his business hissing and that’s what his critics THOUGHT he was saying?
If Satan is a snake, could “6-6-6” be the “Measurements of the Snake”?
Donald. Six letters.
Drumpf (the true name). Six letters.
I can’t find any arithmetical legerdemain to turn his middle name into a six.
But please note, his middle name is John.
Truly, the End Times are upon us. 😐
Ah, should have thought of this–his family name is Germanic. And there are variant forms of John in that language family. Hannes. Johann.
Donald Johann Drumpf. 666.
We having fun yet?
You know, sometimes you get so wrapped up in numerology and various other arcane practices, you miss the obvious–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/666_Fifth_Avenue
Good try…good try.
What’s his tupee’s name?
Internet applications connect to destination addresses with TCP/IP port numbers to indicate which application on the destination host they’re connecting to. For example, the port for secured web communications is 443.
With that in mind, the developers of the video game Doom at id Software knew which port they wanted to be known for.
666 UDP Doom, First online FPS
http://www.meridianoutpost.com/resources/articles/well-known-tcpip-ports.php
Donald Trump was elected in 2016 = 666+666+666+6+6+6
Wow. That must’ve taken a while to figure out. That’s a prize-winner!
I just want to make a brief (but, I hope, possibly helpful) footnote here. And I *certainly* realize I’m not telling Dr Ehrman anything he not perfectly well aware of…
…but the “Number of the Beast” is not “[six][six][six]”. In the first place, in all Greek manuscripts the number is written out in full: e.g. “six-hundred-and-sixty-six”.
Moreover, even if the number were written out in “digits”, it wouldn’t be “666” in that, in Greek, the symbols for “six-hundred”, “sixty” and “six” are all different.
I mention this in the hope that anyone who finds themselves arguing with someone who is *sure* they know the “real meaning of 666”, you might find it useful to point this out.
(This is similar to pointing out to someone who is *sure* they know “the true location of Noah’s Ark”, that there is no “Mt Ararat” mentioned in the Bible. Rather, the Ark is described as landing “among the mountains of Ararat” which is basically the same as saying something like “among the Canadian Rockies”. 😉 )
Every party has a pooper….. 🙂
דונאלד י טרמף המלך העוון
Donald J Trump, the Evil King
ד4ו6נ50א1ל30ד4 = 95
10 =10י
ט9ר200מ40ף80 = 329
ה5מ40ל30ך20 = 95
ה5ע70ו6ו6ן50 = 137
95 + 10 + 329 + 95 + 137 = 666
Quod erat demonstrandum
Wow. Did you do this one yourself? You certainly win a prize!!
Yes, the trick is the creative use of matres lectionis.
This is wayyyyy out of my league, mathematically speaking.
And so far out of Trump’s league, he wouldn’t even know you were insulting him. 😉
666 is like The Bible Code. It says everything!
Dr. Ehrman, I believe that I have already pointed out that 666 is (coincidentally?) the sum of all the Roman numerals up to D.
I = 1
V = 5
X = 10
L = 50
C = 100
D = 500
I + V + X + L + C + D = 666
Odd coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.
But from the context of Revelation 13, it’s quite clear that the Beasts represent Rome and/or the Emperors, and the “heads” of the beasts represent Rome’s legions. For instance, the head that “had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed” probably represents Legio XII Fulminata, which was effectively annihilated at the battle of Beth Horon in 66 CE, but a fully reconstituted Fulminata took part in the later siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
The first Beast, therefore, probably represents Nero and the second Beast represents Vespasian. For the Jewish rebels they probably saw the events of 66 to 69 in apocalyptic terms. Their victory at Beth Horon, followed by the assassination of Nero and the subsequent war of succession in the Year of the Four Emperors in 69 CE, that put it into the minds of the Jews (and, therefore, the early Christians) that this was the great eschatological battle that they had been anxiously awaiting and that Rome’s setbacks were God intervening in history to bring about Jewish victory. They probably anticipated that at some point soon the Messiah was going to arrive, accompanied by the heavenly host, to help finally destroy the enemy’s of God, i.e. Rome.
In this context, we might be able to work it backwards. The number of the Beast is calculated to be 666. The number is the number of a man. And the value of this number is also the “name” of the Beast. And this name was a mark that was put onto the right hands and foreheads of those who wanted to do business. Well, how do you do business? With money. And what kind of money did they use back then? Coins. And what was on the coins? Images and letters. And where did people place coins when doing business? Into each others hands. And, finally, what was the coin that rankled the Jews after their defeat? The Judaea Capta coin issued by Vespasian.
Iudaea or Imperator = I
Capta or Caesar = C
Vespasian = V
Devicta (defeated) or Denarius = D
Just a coincidence? Maybe.
Interesting.
One of the guys in my men’s small group has never been a fan of cell phones, calling them “evil”, but has had to carry one for work. Recently we were discussing the fact that the newer iPhones are much heavier than they used to be. The host had a food scale handy so we started weighing our phones. My old iPhone 6 came in the lightest at 4.84 ounces. The other guys all had Android phones and all weighed over 6 ounces. The guy who thinks of cell phones as evil weighed his and found that it weighed 6.66 ounces. Now he had proof that his cell phone is evil! It was a good laugh!
This isn’t 666, but I read some people discussing ‘Trump Pence’ because it sounds like ‘trumpets’ as in the 7 Trumpets.
My former church teaches that the mark of the beast is a literal number, like an alphanumeric coded chip they’ll put on you. I imagine you’ve seen that. Of course, the ‘666’ or the name of the beast are taken figuratively. And Revelation 14:1 with God’s name on people’s foreheads isn’t an alphanumeric code.
Would there be barcoding involved?
Just interesting, not necessarily meaning anything here, but 6+6+6=18 and 1+8=9 …those who know the significance of the numbers 3, 6, and 9 can appreciate this math…it is about reducing the single digits of a number to one of these three numbers, but especially the number 9…the number 9, I think, represents the universe (been a long time since reading Nikola Tesla’s work and don’t always understand everything I know)…again, just, maybe, interesting for math and science folks.
If Ronald Wilson Reagan is an example, take this. An ever growing part of the german population looks at Angela Merkel, née Kasner …
Ah…
My ex-wife, a Fundamentalist Christian, was convinced Obama was the Anti-Christ. I recently saw some videos on YouTube where some believe that Obama still is the anti-Christ and will soon be appointed Secretary General of the United Nations before he springs into action. To me that’s just as silly as those that believe Trump is God’s anointed one.
The one that made me laugh the most came back in the mid-80s when I was married to my Fundamentalist Christian wife; I heard a Christian Radio program (can’t remember which one it was) that was convinced that King Juan-Carlos of Spain was the anti-Christ. The only thing I can remember why the radio host was convinced the King of Spain was the Beast with the number 666 is that through some mathematical gymnastics he felt his name added to 666 and also given the fact that the King was born in Rome. As a Royal Historian I found that one pretty funny.
This topic always made me scratch my head as otherwise well adjusted and rational human beings can be so easily given over to irrationality and superstition. Oh, I don’t mean what I said about about my ex-wife to reflect any ill will about her because to this day she is stil actually a close and dear friend.
What I wanna know is – who’s the Uncle Christ?
I had a revelation in a dream and it was proven true!!!
Using numbers for letters (A=1, B=2, etc.):
Hillary Rodham Clinton = 231, add the digits 6!
Russia = 87, add the digits 15, add the digits 6!
Vladimir Putin = 168, add the digits 15, add the digits 6!
Proof of Hillary and Putin working together as the beast with the number 666!
A bit off topic, but years ago I read the Baburnama. It recounts the conquest of India by Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire.
As Babur and his lieutenants ride across India, leading the army, they repeatedly stop for picnics under handy trees. As part of these picnics, they drink wine, chew khat, and play number games with each other’s names.
And I’m thinking that these stoners founded one of the great military empires.
It is a well known “fact” that religion is much to serious to be taken seriously. It is meant to be enjoyed and be a source of joy. Humor can only improve belief. And I seriously believe that.
CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR
Convert the U’s to V’s to use Latin letters:
CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR
Extract the Roman numerals:
C V V L D I V
100 + 5 + 5 + 50 + 500 + 1 + 5 = 666
Barney is the beast.
Wow.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner own’s a building in NYC with the address 666 Fifth avenue. You don’t even have to play number games with that one. The number is literally right there.
Wow. The level of nerd just went way up lol. I love this blog even more.
Donald Trump was born June 14, and was 70 years old when elected. June is the 6th month and 1+4+7+0=6+6–> 6 6 6
Oh, also beware November 17, 2018, because that is the 666th day since January 20, 2017.
Wow.
I used to do valet parking and worked with a guy who absolutely wouldn’t park or retrieve a car with a ticket number with consecutive 666 anywhere on it. It became a running joke to attempt to get him to “accidentally” move a car with said numbers. Finally, after weeks of this, I began to explain to him that some tickets’ numers could be ADDED up to equal 666. We had fun watching this guy try to do math in his head with each ticket number while we were getting slammed, and the supervisor screaming at him to hurry up. Wrong? Eh, it was fun.
1. The number indicates the sons of adoniam: 666 (Ezra2:13) 🙂
2. VICARIVS FILII DEI (THE PROCURATOR OF THE SON OF GOD)= V+I+C+I+V+I+L+I+I+D+I=666 🙂
This isn’t an interpretation of 666, but an example of fundamentalist superstition about it. Many years ago, I was the cashier in a restaurant (when prices were much lower). One day, one of the servers brought me a bill to ring up, and told me this story involving it.
She had waited on a father and son, serving them lunch. Before giving them the bill, she asked if they wanted dessert. “No,” he said. “Are you sure?” She asked one more time. “Yes.” Then she gave him the bill. With tax, it came to $6.66. He immediately told her that both he and his son would have dessert! Anything to avoid a connection with 666!
יר יר בינכס שוב חי
Gematria = 888
Jar Jar Binks redivivus is the antichrist.
Yes, well maybe 888 is a now-lost textual variant!
Google “725 fifth avenue and east 57th street Manhattan.” You’ll see a well-known building there.
Subtract 57 from 725 and you get 668. The building at this site, according to Wikipedia, stands 664 feet tall. Average those two figures together: 668 and 664, and you get ….
Great thread. Comments one and all are too funny.
Funny! I’ve got a good one. Back when I was young, I really wanted to be in the “66 Club” at Church. This was a club for youth who could name Genesis to Revelation in order. Took me a couple of years. But I finally did it and got my reward. Not a trophy. Just a button pin that said “66 Club Member”. Now here was the real kicker — I was the 6th member in my Church’s youth group!