Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's
Speaker 1: Chuck Hail Satan. This is short Stuff. You're Josh un Chuck,
Speaker 1: and that's Bruce Dickinson standing right over there. For some reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a zero percent chance of Iron Made not
Speaker 1: making an appearance in this. You got to, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's I don't know if it's their best album.
Speaker 1: Power Slave is probably their best album, but that's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty far up there. Although simmer down, everybody, there's really
Speaker 1: no such thing as a bad Iron Maiden album. I
Speaker 1: wasn't that into them. I need to give them a shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they age really really well. Um, it's it's just really
Speaker 1: well done music. They're almost the prog band of metal
Speaker 1: of metal. They're just so ridiculously talented, every single one
Speaker 1: of them. So yeah, it's good stuff. I highly advise
Speaker 1: you to get back in to it. Okay, I will.
Speaker 1: And what we're talking about today is the number six
Speaker 1: six six and our old pal Dave Rus put this
Speaker 1: together for how stuff works dot com. And one of
Speaker 1: the first things he says is his article is like,
Speaker 1: would you buy a car with a license by ending
Speaker 1: in six six six? And dude, my pickup truck has
Speaker 1: six six six on the license. No it doesn't. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about it a while ago when it when
Speaker 1: it came in. Well, I've delighted. I hit my head
Speaker 1: since then, so I've forgotten that is it's great. You
Speaker 1: need to get like some sort of graphics on the
Speaker 1: side or whatever, like devil Mobile or something like that.
Speaker 1: Maybe I will. Um. So the answer to that question
Speaker 1: from Dave then for you is yes, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who wouldn't who would not um, it's mostly
Speaker 1: god fearing people who believe that there is a book
Speaker 1: in the Bible. Well they don't believe it, like there
Speaker 1: actually is a book in the Bible, but there in
Speaker 1: this book, Book of Revelations, I think chapter thirteen or
Speaker 1: no after three, Verse eighteen says this, here's wisdom. Let
Speaker 1: him who has understand and calculate the number of the beast,
Speaker 1: for the number is that of a man, and his
Speaker 1: number is six six six. Yeah. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen the movie, I mean, this has been in plenty
Speaker 1: of movies, but the movie The Omen is the most
Speaker 1: famous movie to make use of this because young Damien
Speaker 1: and it's still one of the great moments of movie history.
Speaker 1: When they're searching through his hair on his head. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they see that six six six. It's clearly tattooed,
Speaker 1: but tattooed by God, I guess, yeah, by the Holy Ghost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty scary, it is. That's a good scene.
Speaker 1: That's that's a good movie too. Um. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole thing is this number. What this Bible Versus saying
Speaker 1: is there's a basically Satan, the beast has a number
Speaker 1: so that you can recognize them. When you see this number,
Speaker 1: you can recognize that this is Satan, or an agent
Speaker 1: of Satan, or somebody who is going to kill you
Speaker 1: if you don't worship him, who is the converse of God,
Speaker 1: who is in opposition to God, and is the opposite
Speaker 1: of everything right and good. And so here me, the
Speaker 1: writer of revelations, is going to to make you wise
Speaker 1: to this, and just look out for six six six
Speaker 1: And do those of us alive today, we have no
Speaker 1: idea what that means, Like, how are you going to
Speaker 1: say somebody as a number. But back in the first
Speaker 1: century ce Um among Greek speakers, this is a very
Speaker 1: common form of word play um that they would have
Speaker 1: immediately recognized and they think that back in the day,
Speaker 1: anybody reading the Book of Revelations around you know, the
Speaker 1: first century of this, uh, the millennium before this one, um,
Speaker 1: they would know exactly who the beast was and who
Speaker 1: this was talking about. Yeah, because there weren't numbers like
Speaker 1: we think of them in Greece at the time, and Greek.
Speaker 1: The Arabic nibbles came around hundreds of years later. So
Speaker 1: in in Greece, each letter of the Greek alphabet and
Speaker 1: in Hebrew actually had a numeric value. So there was
Speaker 1: this thing that we're going to talk about after a
Speaker 1: message break here in a minute, called I sup sess fee,
Speaker 1: I subsess fee. Yeah, and see added in there, keep
Speaker 1: going sefee. Good job, it's in there somewhere. I'm that's right,
Speaker 1: And that means in Greek equal in numeric value. And
Speaker 1: that was a way, uh for in the first century
Speaker 1: basically where you could it was sort of like, uh,
Speaker 1: not Morse code, but a those games. Yeah, those games
Speaker 1: kids play when you send like a numeric code to
Speaker 1: someone and then they have to translate the code by
Speaker 1: what letter it represents to get the final I guess.
Speaker 1: In Christmas story, it was what drink your ovaltine. Be
Speaker 1: sure to drink your ovaltine. It's a Crumby commercial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so bad. Yeah, but it wasn't like you didn't need
Speaker 1: a secret Dakota ring. Everyone walking around speaking Greek knew
Speaker 1: that alpha was interchangeable with one, Beta was two, Pie
Speaker 1: was eighty, which is weird because I thought pie was
Speaker 1: three point one, four, etcetera. Si is seven hundred, for example,
Speaker 1: and so um, if you added together letters, you could
Speaker 1: come up with a number for that word or that name.
Speaker 1: So you could say that a name had a number,
Speaker 1: and that's what this is talking about. That's right. So
Speaker 1: that's the setup, and we'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about is up sefee right after this. Okay, Chuck's just
Speaker 1: exactly like say, if your name was spelled alpha, beta, pie, si,
Speaker 1: your number would be seven eighty three. You could also
Speaker 1: take seven eighty three and figure out whose name that meant.
Speaker 1: It's way harder to do in transverse, but you you
Speaker 1: if there's say some famous people that maybe you suspect
Speaker 1: that the author is talking about, you could say, oh,
Speaker 1: well does that equal or in this case six six six,
Speaker 1: And there's one guy in particular who the writers of
Speaker 1: Revelations would have um very much focused on is potentially
Speaker 1: the beast and agent of satan Um, who would wanted
Speaker 1: to mark you with his number so that you couldn't
Speaker 1: buy or sell anything without that mark, or again, who
Speaker 1: would kill you if you didn't worship him, And that
Speaker 1: particular guy was named Nero. Yeah, so that was a
Speaker 1: pretty famous isap ces fee god. I keep adding an
Speaker 1: s in there. You gotta put your word butcher apron on. Well,
Speaker 1: it is a weird word. I s O P s
Speaker 1: e p h y uh. But that was a very
Speaker 1: famous one early on. That was it goes a little
Speaker 1: something like this a calculation new colon nero his mother slew.
Speaker 1: So in this case, nero equals one thousand and five,
Speaker 1: which has the same value of the phrase his mother slew.
Speaker 1: So basically that's like, oh my god, Nero killed his mom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about the isobsess fees having like um
Speaker 1: equal equal value is that if one word had a
Speaker 1: numeric value too, and and that's the same as say
Speaker 1: another word or another phrase, that meant that there was
Speaker 1: some mystical metaphysical connection between those two. So do people
Speaker 1: who were like, yeah, Nero's terrible, He probably murder his mother.
Speaker 1: The fact that Nero, his mother slew and Nero had
Speaker 1: the same numeric value of one zero zero five. That
Speaker 1: was just proof pause ative, like you didn't need to
Speaker 1: look any further, um, giving me my crystal ball and
Speaker 1: my birkin stocks. Right, So you might be saying yourself,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. You guys said Nero was one thousand
Speaker 1: and five, But you also said that some people believe
Speaker 1: that they were referring to Nero as the six six six. Uh,
Speaker 1: you gotta rejigger this a little bit. In that case,
Speaker 1: you have to use the full name Caesar Nero in Greek.
Speaker 1: Um that translated into Hebrew. Hebrew is don say Hebrew,
Speaker 1: I love it, dude. That's a much more modern version
Speaker 1: of that word. He's my Hebrew uh n r w
Speaker 1: n q s r, which is neuron keys are And
Speaker 1: then that adds up to six six six. Some people say, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, sure, why not? Um. The thing is, there's
Speaker 1: a big objection to that one that I ran across,
Speaker 1: and that is that Revelations was written in Greek four
Speaker 1: ee speakers who may not have actually known that. Um,
Speaker 1: that you were supposed to transliterate this into Hebrew, and
Speaker 1: may not have been familiar with Hebrew and not known
Speaker 1: how to do it. That doesn't necessarily mean oh no,
Speaker 1: this is wrong. Like if you're encoding a message, having
Speaker 1: an extra step involving another language is definitely not against
Speaker 1: the rules. But from what I can understand, this is
Speaker 1: much more widespread and normal, uh pursuit or a diversion
Speaker 1: this kind of sefe it is hard to say, isn't
Speaker 1: it It is then then this would be like that's
Speaker 1: an extra big step compared to what they normally did.
Speaker 1: Like there's graffiti that they found in the ancient world
Speaker 1: that uses iop sess fees. Yeah, like, hey, you know
Speaker 1: who I'm into six, and so some lady in town
Speaker 1: would be like, oh, I'm seven eight six. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: some people say, I don't know about that trans trans
Speaker 1: inslating it into Hebrew and then it making sense as
Speaker 1: six six six. I don't know about that one. It
Speaker 1: seems like a bit of a reach, but I don't
Speaker 1: know enough about it. I do think it's interesting though,
Speaker 1: that the idea that um, they were using this coded
Speaker 1: language possibly in the Bible. Yeah, I guess it was.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was all the rage back then.
Speaker 1: Oh you like that, Yeah, it was. It was very hot.
Speaker 1: So some people who say, Okay, this is way off.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Nero because, by the way, the other thing
Speaker 1: about neuro really kind of dates revelations, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like it's meant to be kind of a
Speaker 1: timeless classic, and a lot of people are like, well,
Speaker 1: the beast hasn't even been born yet, and everyone knows
Speaker 1: that the bar code is the mark of the beast.
Speaker 1: So the idea that it's just Nero, who has zero
Speaker 1: effect on our world today, it doesn't. It's it doesn't
Speaker 1: play very well that interpretation. Other people have interpreted as
Speaker 1: meaning um that it's it's not even it's not talking
Speaker 1: about a specific person, which is tough to get around
Speaker 1: because the translates all of them. That I saw is
Speaker 1: that it's a number of a man, a man, not
Speaker 1: man meaning like humankind. It's like a human number, which
Speaker 1: is I think exactly how Iron Maiden's guy puts it
Speaker 1: on number of the beast. Um. But it's the number
Speaker 1: of a man, like a specific man. But if you
Speaker 1: throw that a out and you just take it like
Speaker 1: it's a human number is what it means, then this
Speaker 1: interpretation is saying that it's it's actually pointing out that
Speaker 1: Satan is a cheap imitation, a cheap parody of God
Speaker 1: and the grace of God, and so this is what
Speaker 1: you're looking out for. This is this is a different interpretation.
Speaker 1: Well one thing, I know, if man is five and
Speaker 1: the devil is six and God is seven, then this
Speaker 1: this monkey has gone to heaven. That's right, Man, wiser
Speaker 1: words have never been spoken. Agreed. I love that song.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the point is that the symbolic number
Speaker 1: of God is seven and Satan's is six, So it's
Speaker 1: like a just kind of Satan's a cheap imitation of God,
Speaker 1: so don't fall for his jam. That's right. So there
Speaker 1: you have at six six six. It's either nero or
Speaker 1: it's just saying that Satan is a cheap imitation of God.
Speaker 1: But however you slice it, it's a really good Iron
Speaker 1: Maiden album. Okay, I agreed, And that's it for Short Stuff. Everybody, Um,
Speaker 1: go out and read about this on How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: if you want, and definitely go listen to some Iron Maiden.
Speaker 1: It'll do you good. Short Stuff is apt stuff you
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