The Devil’s Number, 666, Has a Hidden Meaning
We’ve all heard about the infamous number 666, which in the New Testament is called the “number of the beast” and is now also called the “number of the Antichrist.”
But what is it about this simple, symmetrical number that has scared people for more than 2,000 years? Isn’t it just a number? Or is it…?
The boys from Numberphile say that the number 666 doesn’t have any amazing mathematical properties, but if you look at its history, it shows something pretty amazing about how the Bible was written when it was first written.
It turns out that what you see in The Book of Revelation when the author talks about 666 in a vision of the end of the world isn’t quite what you get.
Simply put, 666 is a code, and if you were alive and could read at the time of the New Testament, it wasn’t a very clever one.
This text was first written in ancient Greek, where numbers are written as letters, just like in Hebrew, the other main language of the original Biblical texts.
Alpha, beta, and gamma are the first letters of the Greek alphabet. They stand for the numbers 1, 2, and 3.
Then, just like in Roman numerals, when you want to make a big number like 100, 1,000, or 1,000,000, you use a special combination of letters for that number.
Pete says in the video above, “What this means is that every word also has a number value.” Don’t forget that.
So, let’s go back to the Bible, where it says in Chapter 13 of The Book of Revelation: “Let the smart person figure out what the number of the beast means, because it is the number of a man. He has the number 666.”
The English word “reckon” comes from the Greek word for “calculate” or “solve,” which is shown in the video. So, says Pete, it’s almost like the text is saying, “I’m going to give you a puzzle, and you need to figure out the number of the Beast.”
So, when you use the Greek alphabet to translate the number 666, what does it mean?
Well, because the Roman Empire and its leader, Nero Caesar, were seen as particularly evil at the time, many historians have been looking for references to this in the Bible, which was not written in a vacuum and was very much a product of its time.
When you look at the original text, you’ll see that the letters of 666 are written in Hebrew. Hebrew gives numbers that mean words and words that mean numbers a higher priority than ancient Greek did. It was clear that the author was trying to say something.
And sure enough, if you write 666 in Hebrew, you get Neron Kesar, which is the Hebrew spelling of Nero Caesar.
Even if you use the other way to write the number of the beast, which is 616, which is how it is written in some early Bible texts, you can still figure out that it means Nero Cesar.
Pete says in the video above, “It adds to the mystery of it being a riddle or a secret.”
“No one wants to write a book about imperial persecutions that says, “Nero Caesar is the source of all evil.” You aren’t going to explain that.”
Now, I said that 666 doesn’t have any interesting math properties, but that’s not entirely true because it’s what’s called a triangle number.
Watch the Numberphile video above to find out what that means and to learn more about how the devil’s number is related to the roulette table.
