Bad News Fletcher: 666 wrong #

[JTR]

Beast's real mark devalued to '616'

Revelation fragment

Chris Wattie
National Post
Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Satanists, apocalypse watchers and heavy metal guitarists may have to adjust their demonic numerology after a recently deciphered ancient biblical text revealed that 666 is not the fabled Number of the Beast after all.

A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.

Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil's prime number.

"This is a very nice piece to find," Dr. Aitken said. "Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast."

The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.

Where more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the "number of the beast," or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book's apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.

"This is very early confirmation of that number, earlier than any other text we've found of that passage," Dr. Aitken said. "It's probably about 100 years before any other version."

The fragment was part of a hoard of previously illegible manuscripts discovered in an ancient garbage dump outside the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. Although the papyrus was first excavated in 1895, it was badly discoloured and damaged. Classics scholars at Oxford University were only recently able to read it using new advanced imaging techniques.

Elijah Dann, a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Toronto, said the new number is unlikely to make a dent in the popularity of 666.

"Otherwise, a lot of sermons would have to be changed and a lot of movies rewritten," he said with a laugh. "There's always someone with an active imagination who can put another interpretation on it.

"It just shows you that when you study something as cryptic and mystic as the Book of Revelation there's an almost unlimited number of interpretations."

The book is thought to have been written by the disciple John and according to the King James Bible, the traditional translation of the passage reads: "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 Dr. Aitken said that translation was drawn from much later versions of the New Testament than the fragment found in Oxyrhynchus. "When we're talking about the early biblical texts, we're always talking about copies and they are copies made, at best, 150 to 200 years after [the original] was written," she said.

"They can have mistakes in the copying, changes for political or theological reasons ... it's like a detective story piecing it all together."

Dr. Aitken said, however, that scholars now believe the number in question has very little to do the devil. It was actually a complicated numerical riddle in Greek, meant to represent someone's name, she said.

"It's a number puzzle -- the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero."

Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. "It's a very political document," Dr. Aitken said. "It's a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it's written in coded language and riddles."

[warhead]

Beast's real mark devalued to '616'

[Bruce Dickinson runs and changes all of the combinations on his luggage]

War

[Duffster]

This wil be like the christian version of the Y2K crisis!

[adamcal]

So my $666 deal for heavy metal bands will have to lowered.......um I think not!!


The funny part of it is that I gave the same deal to a church group recently.......hehe


ahhh, I amuse myself!!@

[JTR]

Originally Posted by adamcal

So my $666 deal for heavy metal bands will have to lowered.......um I think not!!


The funny part of it is that I gave the same deal to a church group recently.......hehe


ahhh, I amuse myself!!@

Just make it $666 tax included...

GS smilies need a devil's horn version

[MASSIVE Master]

Six...

Six - Six...


The guy down the block from the Beast....

[Curve Dominant]

Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master

Six...

Six - Six...


The guy down the block from the Beast....

And the folks living at 615 and 617 suddenly have realized who was doing donuts on their front lawns at 3am.

That damned Beast. Give him a bitchin' Camaro, and he thinks he owns the friggin' neighborhood.

[Prince Alsihad]

That's just great!!

I got ****ing married on 6/16!!! That explains it all!!!!! I KNEW there was something evil about our relationship.

[Paul David]

Originally Posted by Prince Alsihad

That's just great!!

I got ****ing married on 6/16!!! That explains it all!!!!! I KNEW there was something evil about our relationship.

And here in Arizona June 16th is always hot as hell... It's all starting to make sense now.

Luckily this won't effect my devotional time too much.

[TheReal7]

and 616 upside down is 919....and 9 starts with and 'N' so 919 = N1N = NIN .....hmmm.....Nine Inch Nails?

I think not!!!!!

EVIL,..... EVIL I tells ya!!!!

[cebolao]

i got the ABLETON LIVE t-shirt with their LIVE logo.

how surprised was i when i looked into the mirror, wearing this t-shirt!

[Jules]

Originally Posted by adamcal

So my $666 deal for heavy metal bands will have to lowered.......um I think not!!


The funny part of it is that I gave the same deal to a church group recently.......hehe


ahhh, I amuse myself!!@

Me n' all M8

[C.Lambrechts]

Originally Posted by TheReal7

and 616 upside down is 919....and 9 starts with and 'N' so 919 = N1N = NIN .....hmmm.....Nine Inch Nails?

good catch ....


I wonder if they'll do a remake of that Damian - the omen movie now.

[RichT]

Just think of all the tattoos that are wrong...

[BevvyB]

Return to sender

[Ruudman]

sdrawkcab tsop ym etirw ot em secrof daerht sihT


namduur

[Fletcher]

It's just some fukked up discount hore with no overhead trying to throw a spanner in the machine... I'll be damned if I'm going to return all my serial number 666 hardware for serial number 616 hardware [like that's actually possible]

Jules... you blocked w-h-o-r-e? WTF?

This is crap.

Think about it. IF God is God enough to create all that we see, God enough to design and create man, God enough to make a way that we can be with Him, then God is God enough to make sure that we have an accurate way to learn about it.

It would be the temporary powers that be, Satan, man, etc that screw with things to add a b it of confusion.

We don't have the original texts that the 60 translators had when they did the first English versions. The had close to 500 texts that were preserved from around the world. The KJV evolved from the first english texts (the 7 th revision) and it relays with the Hebrew Old Testament (as good as 1600's English could) and Coine Greek found in 95% of the texts. The other 5% were deemed corrupt. Some of the other Classical Greek texts were found to be frauds, and not the original Greek texts, as Classical was not the language of the common man, but only the elite like Plato, etc.

People don't like accepting that there is a real written word of God, or that there is a God, or that God is who he is, because it requires a response that they are not willing to make.

[RichT]

Originally Posted by Lowdbrent

This is crap.

Think about it. IF God is God enough to create all that we see, God enough to design and create man, God enough to make a way that we can be with Him, then God is God enough to make sure that we have an accurate way to learn about it.

It would be the temporary powers that be, Satan, man, etc that screw with things to add a b it of confusion.

We don't have the original texts that the 60 translators had when they did the first English versions. The had close to 500 texts that were preserved from around the world. The KJV evolved from the first english texts (the 7 th revision) and it relays with the Hebrew Old Testament (as good as 1600's English could) and Coine Greek found in 95% of the texts. The other 5% were deemed corrupt. Some of the other Classical Greek texts were found to be frauds, and not the original Greek texts, as Classical was not the language of the common man, but only the elite like Plato, etc.

People don't like accepting that there is a real written word of God, or that there is a God, or that God is who he is, because it requires a response that they are not willing to make.

Insert patronising reason as why God would want us to learn this for ourselves.

Sign off with a psalm...

[Thermionic]

I hate you JTR! My Fairchild 666 compressor and Grampian 666 Reverb are now worth half what they were before you started this thread you git!


While we're at it, can anyone tell me why Roland never made a 404 beatbox?


Cheers,
Justin

(I'm only kidding - I don't own a 666 Fairchild, and passed on the opportunity to buy the Grampian)

[2leod]

Originally Posted by Ruudman

sdrawkcab tsop ym etirw ot em secrof daerht sihT


namduur

LOL!

Just think how many tat parlours are trying to figure out how to make a 6 into a 1 without it looking like graffitti.

616... it doesn't have the same ominous ring to it? More like mark of the iguana...

(edit) I had to check who Bruce Dickinson was... LOLOL

[joelgtrnut]

I better call that death metal band I recorded last week and tell them to change all their lyrics before they are proclaimed posers. This is a good thing! More $$$ for me.... bad ass!

[James Lehmann]

668 - Neighbour Of The Beast
Will this handle now pass to the folk living at 618, and how will it affect property prices?

[Phil Cibley]

can anyone tell me why Roland never made a 404 beatbox?


Because they never found the URL?

[el cochino]

Originally Posted by warhead

Beast's real mark devalued to '616'

[Bruce Dickinson runs and changes all of the combinations on his luggage]

War

"Six, sixteen, the number of the beast".....

It still works......

\m/\m/

[littledoodler]

ahhh,

i was born on 6-16-73

[lm66]

While we're at it, can anyone tell me why Roland never made a 404 beatbox?

Because 404 is an old car's model of the early 70's by Peugeot.

[Thermionic]

The reason I was given for the lack of 404, was that in Japan, the number 4 is considered unlucky.

I don't think it would be a trademark infringement as Peugeot would be in a different TM category

Justin

[David R.]

Still looking for an EV 666 microphone. Should be easier to find now.

[FMNYC]

as a child of the beast i have to report that His Darkness is totally pissed off.
he loved the whole three identical numbers symmetry thing.
i mean, you should see our house, triple sixes everywhere, the floor tiles, there isn't a single lone window, they are all triple... yes sixes, right next to each other.
lemme tell ya, ain't nothing like staring out onto the lake of fire with the smell of brimstone wafting through triple six-shaped windows in the mornings.
plus the shape really muffles the screams of the damned below.
now what, redesign Hell?
aw, come on!

FM

FM would rather burn out than fade away.