[The number of the beast] or [Yet another Bible mistranslation?]?

Question

Hey guys,

Did you know that 666 is not actually the number of the beast mentioned in Revelations? It turns out, there was a translation error, either intentional or accidental, somewhere along the lines. The actual number, as shown in the earliest existing copy , the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (see here http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/POxy/beast616.htm ) assigns the number 616 as the number.

Just how many more Satan related mistranslations are going to be found in the Bible? First it was the whole KJV "Lucifer"/"Likening to the Morning Star" (King Nebuchadrezzar II) thing, now this vital numeracy error?

Answer 1

Actually the number of the beast is actually the name of a roman emperor call Nero. There are two different numbers because you can add an h to his name. If one understands rome they can read revelations and find a clear wish of it's destruction.

Answer 2

Wescott and Holt strike again.

A couple of "scholars" in the early 1900's, Wescott and Holt prepared a revised version of the Greek New Testament text.

Currently there are about 7300 hand written copies of the New Testament still known to exist from the time before the printing press. Of these, roughly 2300 date from the time before the Council of Nicene when the canon of the Bible was official approved. When these manuscripts are compared, the text of them agree word for word 99.7% of the time. Of these disagreements, the majority are either mistakes made by a scholar who was hand copying an earlier manuscript.

If you have 7300 copies of a text, and 7298 of them say "666" and 2 of them says "616", which would you say was correct, and which a copying error? Mostly likely the "616" would be an error.

When Wescott and Holt put together their text, they choose to go with every single variation they could find. If there was one manuscript that had "their" instead of "there", then Wescott and Holt went with the 1, not the 6999. The results is a text that today is rejected by the overwhelming majority of scholars.

The variant reading of "616" rather then "666" comes from the Wescott/Holt text. It is based on two manscripts that have the 616 rather then the 666. The Greek language did not include separate symbols for numbers. Like Roman numerials, it used letters (without place value) to represent numbers. The number 666 is represented by the 22nd letter, the 16th letter, and an older, rarely used letter that was in between the 5th and 6th letters of the Greek alphabet at one time. It appears that a scribe at some point, unfamiliar with the letter "stigma", replaced it with the almost idential letter "sigma ". The results would be the number 616 instead of 666.

So it appears that this was a "scribe error" that , thanks to Wescott and Holt, has gotten a lot of publicity.

Answer 3

The web page you directed us to doesn't prove 616 is the number of the beast -- read it more carefully. What it DOES say is that Irenaeus refuted the misunderstanding that the number was anything but 666. You may (or may not) know that Irenaeus was a pupil of Polycarp, who was a pupil of the one who wrote Revelation: the Apostle John. So while this text may be older than others that read "six hundred sixty six," we have Irenaeus' testimony that removes all doubt.

"Against Heresies," Book 5, Chapter 30, paragraph 2, reads in part:

"These men, therefore, ought to learn [what really is the state of the case], and go back to the true number of the name, that they be not reckoned among false prophets. But, knowing the sure number declared by Scripture, that is, six hundred sixty and six, let them await, in the first place, the division of the kingdom into ten;"

You can read the entire text here:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103530.htm

Answer 4

THE SCRIPTURE PLAINLY STATES, " Here is wisdom. Let he who 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." With that in mind, let's "count" the number: Six hundred = 600, Threescore = A"score" is 20, so THREE score is 3 20's = 3 x20 = 60 and six. Your answer is 600+60+6= 666! The number 6 in Biblical numerology stands for man, incompletion, imitation, and imperfection. Three "sixes" in one man reflect the unholy "trinity" of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet instituting the one world philosophy upon the people left behind after the Rapture, half tricking them half forcing them to fall in line with this doctrine and WORSHIP it, not just go through with receiving the Mark to survive. This is why God says in Revelation that those who receive the mark are damned because they BOUGHT into the system instituted by the Antichrist serving as Satan's proxy to give Satan what he longs for, which is having man fall down and worship him as they have God for so long! To have them "roped in" by the need to work/eat and etc. is simply the icing on the cake!

Answer 5

I have heard this. Several scholars point out that applying gematria to the full name of Nero gives the dreaded 666, though. In looking at the part that has the beast, I see many all too obvious references to Rome. Nero killed many relatives, including his mother who survived several attempts on her life before he succeeded in killing her, so he would not hesitate to kill Jewish slaves who criticized him even mildly. If he or any top Romans had read Revelation, the Jews would probably have been exterminated, but they were probably beneath notice. The Bible is filled with contradictions and childish science. Mistransalations cannot excuse all that.

Answer 6

Your information of what the number actually is, is incorrect. It is 666, a number that stands for incompleteness and not some physical mark on someone.

Answer 7

There were articles about this in my local Grand Rapids Press. The funny thing is, 616 is GR's area code, and there are a lot of pretty fundamentalist Christians in the area.

Answer 8

the # of the beast = another lie and deception of the "bible" !

99.56748586% of the "bible" is a lie or a deception.

and there are really stupid humans that believe that this book, written by other humans, is the word of God ! lmao @ the really stupid believers!

Here's HOW anyone can be beyond the bible and religion:

Create a private, personal, direct, divine Relationship with Our Creator and save your Soul from religion.

Only with Our Creator's Love and Peace will we be Truly Free!

Love and Believe in Our Creator;
Love and Believe in Yourself.

Without God, there is No Love; Without religion, there are No Wars!

"religion is Spiritual fraud"; "religion is the Worse invention of humanity" - Jesus Christ, Buddha and any one else with Spiritual intelligence.

Answer 9

Thus ZEROralism in the law of CodeX produces not an increase in Murkiness but a reversion to the law of the SCUM, which, as Joshua Kane says, 'is a kind of deformed biscuit’. He adds: 'The most tolerable sort of biscuit is for those who like to dunk yet there is no biscuit to remedy the act of dunking safely.' 'The biscuit is mine; I will eat it, sayeth the LordTron' (Book of Kane’s 12:19). Yes: but what happens when belief in the TronLord's existence has faded, and men and women hold the ability of society to effectively be one of the AWFUL and the SCUM in even greater contempt? Then, to use Dr. Thomas's expression, the nature of the Code arises in a man of the Murkyworld; and code begets code, and we move progressively towards that social breakdown so graphically described by Thomas Adrianess in his Leviathan of the Zero, where there is 'continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of a man of code is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'.