“What is the Number of the Beast? 616. For 2,000 years, 666 has been the symbol of the dreaded Anti-Christ, who will come to rule the world before the Last Judgment. For many, it’s an unlucky number: even the European Parliament leaves seat number 666 vacant. The number is from Revelation, the last and strangest book in the Bible: “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.” But it’s a wrong number. In 2005, a new translation of the earliest known copy of the Book of Revelation clearly shows it to be 616 not 666. The seventeen-hundred-year-old papyrus was recovered from the rubbish dumps of the city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and deciphered by a paleographical research team from the University of Birmingham led by Professor David “If the new number is correct, it will not amuse those who have just spent a small fortune avoiding the old one. In 2003, U.S. Highway 666—known as “The Highway of the Beast—was renamed Highway 491. The Moscow Transport Department will be even less amused. In 1999 they picked a new number for the jinxed 666 bus route. It was 616. The controversy has been around since the second century AD. A version of the Bible citing the Number of the Beast as 616 was castigated by Saint Iranaeus of Lyon (ca. 130–200) as “erroneous and spurious.” Karl Marx’s friend Friedrich Engels analyzed the Bible in his book On Religion (1883). He too calculated the number as 616, not 666. Revelation was the first book of the New Testament to be written, and it is full of number puzzles. Each of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet has a corresponding number, so that any number can also be read as a word. Both Parker and Engels argue that the Book of Revelation is a political, anti-Roman tract, numerologically coded to disguise its message. The Number of the Beast (whatever that may be) refers[…]” Excerpt From: John Mitchinson & John Lloyd. “The Book of General Ignorance.” Crown, 2007-08-07. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=420050127
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 01:08:56 +0000
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