WEBVTT - Is the 'Number of the Beast' an Ancient Riddle?

0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:08.600
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brainstaff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here,

0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:13.319
<v Speaker 1>would you buy a used car from someone if their

0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:17.280
<v Speaker 1>current license plate ended in sixty sixty six? Or take

0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.640
<v Speaker 1>a job at an office tower in New York City

0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.759
<v Speaker 1>with the address six six six Fifth Avenue. After all,

0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.440
<v Speaker 1>sixty six six is the infamous number of the Beast.

0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:32.000
<v Speaker 1>Allegedly a Satanic code for evil. It comes up in

0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.879
<v Speaker 1>all kinds of fictional horror media as a sometimes literal

0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:40.559
<v Speaker 1>mark of Satan. In the New Standard American Bible, the

0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:45.800
<v Speaker 1>Book of Revelation thirteen eighteen reads, here is wisdom, Let

0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.200
<v Speaker 1>him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast,

0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:51.800
<v Speaker 1>For the number is that of a man, and his

0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:57.360
<v Speaker 1>number is sixty sixty six. From that biblical prophecy, it

0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:01.080
<v Speaker 1>sure sounds like sixty six six is u's lucky number,

0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:04.479
<v Speaker 1>But when you dig deeper into the Bible and its

0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:08.280
<v Speaker 1>historical context, there's evidence that the author of Revelation was

0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.720
<v Speaker 1>using numbers to send his early Christian readers a coded message.

0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.360
<v Speaker 1>In the Bible, the beast refers to an evil looking

0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:20.440
<v Speaker 1>creature that the author of Revelation saw rising out of

0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:25.319
<v Speaker 1>the earth. In an apocalyptic vision Revelation thirteen eleven through eighteen,

0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:31.000
<v Speaker 1>this creature could perform miraculous things, a demand that everyone

0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:33.880
<v Speaker 1>be marked with its name or number, to buy and

0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.400
<v Speaker 1>sell anything, and kill those who did not worship it.

0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.920
<v Speaker 1>Over the centuries, scholars have wondered whether this beast referred

0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.320
<v Speaker 1>to someone who has come and gone, has yet to come,

0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.160
<v Speaker 1>or to no one person in particular. The Book of

0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.600
<v Speaker 1>Revelation was originally written in Greek, the language of the

0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.880
<v Speaker 1>Christian world in the first and second century CE. At

0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.840
<v Speaker 1>that time, they weren't using the numbers that we use today.

0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.840
<v Speaker 1>Our Arabic numerals are based on Indian mathematics that were

0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.640
<v Speaker 1>already in the works back then, but wouldn't be fully

0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:12.959
<v Speaker 1>developed for another few centuries. Instead, to represent numbers, each

0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.639
<v Speaker 1>letter of the Greek and Hebrew alphabet was given a

0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:22.280
<v Speaker 1>numeric value. For example, alpha equals one, beta equals two,

0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:28.280
<v Speaker 1>and Pi equals eighty. The Greek speaking Christians reading Revelation

0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:32.960
<v Speaker 1>would have been very comfortable reading letters as numbers. They

0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.040
<v Speaker 1>also would have been comfortable turning numbers back into letters

0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:42.280
<v Speaker 1>thanks to a practice called isopsophy. Isopsophy loosely means equal

0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.959
<v Speaker 1>in numeric value. It was a popular way of playing

0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.880
<v Speaker 1>with words in the first century and thereabouts. The trick

0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:52.480
<v Speaker 1>was to add up the numeric value of the letters

0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.480
<v Speaker 1>in one word and then find another word or phrase

0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.639
<v Speaker 1>that added up to the same number. Numerically equal words

0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.160
<v Speaker 1>or were thought to have a special connection. One of

0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.120
<v Speaker 1>the best known for century isoce fees comes from the

0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:14.240
<v Speaker 1>Roman historian Spetonius quote a calculation new Nero his mother slew.

0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.880
<v Speaker 1>In this case, the emperor's name Nero equals one thousand

0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.440
<v Speaker 1>and five, which is the exact value of the phrase

0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:28.440
<v Speaker 1>his mother slew. Four Romans who suspected that this ruthless

0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.359
<v Speaker 1>emperor had murdered his mother. This isoce fee was proof.

0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:38.080
<v Speaker 1>Archaeologists have discovered ancient Roman graffiti that substituted numbers for names.

0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:41.400
<v Speaker 1>For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.

0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.360
<v Speaker 1>Spoke with Thomas Weyment, a classics professor at Brigham Young University.

0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.600
<v Speaker 1>He said, there's graffiti at Smyrna and Pompeii that says

0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:53.680
<v Speaker 1>I love her whose number is one thousand, three hundred

0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.920
<v Speaker 1>and eight. That's pretty common and hopefully everyone did their

0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:03.280
<v Speaker 1>math correctly and could make the connections. Some Biblical scholars

0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.560
<v Speaker 1>believe the author of Revelation intended for six sixty six

0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.600
<v Speaker 1>to be an isosophe to be solved by his first

0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:14.760
<v Speaker 1>century readers. A Wayman explained, the author says, this is

0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.159
<v Speaker 1>the number of a man, which is a classic isosophy formula.

0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:21.839
<v Speaker 1>Christians would have known right away. This is a coded message.

0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:29.240
<v Speaker 1>Revelation is famously cryptic. In apocalyptic writings, an angel or

0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.159
<v Speaker 1>other heavenly messenger often reveals their meaning through coded speech.

0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.160
<v Speaker 1>Weyman said, as a reader, you're seeing something through the

0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.080
<v Speaker 1>eyes of the visionary, and he's telling you. You need

0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.000
<v Speaker 1>to make sense of this. That's part of your experience

0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:48.440
<v Speaker 1>and participation in the vision. According to most scholars, six

0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.480
<v Speaker 1>six six was a coded reference to Nero, a beastly

0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:56.560
<v Speaker 1>emperor who brutally persecuted early Christians in the Roman Empire.

0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.280
<v Speaker 1>To solve the isosophy and equate in your o to

0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.520
<v Speaker 1>six sixty six, you must use the full name Caesar

0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:08.200
<v Speaker 1>Nero in Greek, then pourt it to Hebrew. The transliteration

0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.440
<v Speaker 1>of Caesar Nero to Hebrew gives you letters that add

0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:16.320
<v Speaker 1>up to six sixty six. Interestingly, some early manuscripts of

0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:19.880
<v Speaker 1>Revelation have the number written as six one six instead

0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:24.000
<v Speaker 1>of six sixty six. The standard explanation is that Caesar

0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.960
<v Speaker 1>Nero is written differently in Greek versus Latin, which was

0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.800
<v Speaker 1>another language spoken by early Christians. In the Latin version,

0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:36.640
<v Speaker 1>the letters only add up to six one six. Haustuffworks

0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.880
<v Speaker 1>also spoke with James M. Hamilton, a professor of biblical

0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:45.080
<v Speaker 1>theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He sees powerful

0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.760
<v Speaker 1>symbolism in the repetition of the number six for a

0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:52.760
<v Speaker 1>person on a spiritual journey. He explained that in biblical symbolism,

0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:59.360
<v Speaker 1>seven represents completeness or perfection, and only Jesus Christ achieved

0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:03.800
<v Speaker 1>true perfect so if Jesus had a symbolic number, it

0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:08.960
<v Speaker 1>would be seven seven seven. Hamilton thus sees the number

0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.920
<v Speaker 1>of the beast as a warning sign for Christians to

0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:17.200
<v Speaker 1>beware of Satan's quote cheap imitation of Christ. Hamilton said,

0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.120
<v Speaker 1>that's the best Satan can do, one short of perfection.

0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.560
<v Speaker 1>For Hamilton, those false Christs raised by Satan could take

0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:31.360
<v Speaker 1>the form of a corrupt emperor like Nero, or even

0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:35.080
<v Speaker 1>modern cultural norms that rebel against God. In God's sight,

0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:40.679
<v Speaker 1>he said, if participating in that culture entails worshiping false

0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:44.840
<v Speaker 1>gods or denying something that the Bible teaches Christians need

0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:47.480
<v Speaker 1>to say, I'm not going to take the number or

0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:55.040
<v Speaker 1>name of the beast. Today's episode is based on the

0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.480
<v Speaker 1>article six sixty six meaning Angel number or the Devil's

0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:02.320
<v Speaker 1>digits on HowStuffWorks dot Com. Written by Dave Ruse. Brainstuff

0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.280
<v Speaker 1>is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com,

0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:09.080
<v Speaker 1>and it's produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.520
<v Speaker 1>visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:13.600
<v Speaker 1>to your favorite shows.