For those of you who are unclear on the "number of the Beast" thing

[xiphias]

[This isn't a humor post, or a political post. This is a history/theology geeking post. Just so's y'all know what to expect.]

First off, as you all know, the Number of the Beast is "616", not "666" -- the whole "666" thing is a transcription error. The earliest versions of the Book of Revelations have "616".

Second, as you all know, in Hebrew, every letter also has an associated numerical value, and Hebrew numerology is based around the numerical values of words.

Hebrew Letter	Value	Name	English Approximation of Sound
א	1	Aleph	Silent
ב	2	Bet	B or V
ג	3	Gimmel	G (historically, also could sound as j)
ד	4	Dalet	D (historically, could also sound as djz)
ה	5	Hay	H
ו	6	Vav	V, or oo, or oh (historically, sounded as "w", "oo", or "oh", and was called "waw")
ז	7	Zayin	Z
ח	8	Chet	kh (as in "Bach")
ט	9	Tet	T
י	10	Yod	Y
כ	20	Kaf	K or kh
ל	30	Lamed	L
מ	40	Mem	M
נ	50	Nun	N
ס	60	Samekh	S
ע	70	Ayin	Silent, basically
פ	80	Pay	P or F
צ	90	Tzade	ts, as in "pizza"
ק	100	Kuf	K or Q (a little more gutteral than K)
ר	200	Resh	R, more or less
ש	300	Shin	Sh or S
ת	400	Tav	T, T or S in some dialects, T or Th historically

As an aside, I find it interesting that, historically, the following letters had two sounds:
Bet, B and V (no English equivalent of which I know)
Gimmel, G and J (the English letter "g" maintains both sounds)
Dalet, D and djz as in the French "gendarme" (no English equivalent that I know of)
Kof, K and Kh
Pay, P and Ph
Shin, S and Sh
Tav, T and Th

So, a fair number of the Hebrew two-sound letters made it into English. . .

Anyway, that's not what I'm posting about.

The Book of Revelations is clear that "616" refers to a person's name. So you need to find a name, or name and title, which adds up to 616.

How about קסר נרו ? That's 50+200+6 + 100+60+200 = 616. What are the English equivalents of those letters? NRV QSR. Of course, that "V" may be a "W", a "U" or an "O", and we need to add vowels.

NRO QSR. NeRO CaeSaR.

Hard to argue with that one. Emperor Nero pretty much deserved the title of "the Beast", and, for that matter, was the Emperor when the Book of Revelations was written.

So, my point is to just plain relax about the Book of Revelations. We KNOW what the "number of the Beast" is, and who it refers to, and why. It's not a great End-Times Mystery or anything.

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that.. and you know, I *didn't* know that about Nero, I've studied some of Revelations at various points from both a theological and literary standpoint and hadn't got that little piece of info. Which is weird as it gets quoted and miquoted and mentioned so often out of context!

[redbird]

I realize the answer to this may be "no", but do you know--does anyone know--why a language that didn't generally write vowels (and thus didn't need to separate them in writing) has (had?) two silent letters? Or one and a half, since I'd gather that "silent, basically" means that ayin has some effect on pronunciation.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Oh, but it's been so charming how my labmates have been wandering around wishing everyone happy devil day. And I believe a bunch of friends are participating in some elaborate Brides of Satan bit in the park this evening...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's because it doesn't write vowels that it needs silent letters.

Every letter in Hebrew has an associated vowel. Any word which starts with a vowel sound MUST start with a silent letter. Because it it started with a NON-silent letter, it would start with that consonant sound.

Similarly, if a sylable starts with a vowel sound, that sylable must start with a silent letter.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Similar to ancient Egyptian? Actually, some of the sounds are extremely similar... given the history of the Hebrews in Egypt, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

And yes, I knew that about Nero. Saw a very interesting show about it on the History channel (I believe), which explained that pretty much the entire book of Revelations corresponded directly with events that were taking place at the time it was written. The End Times came and went long ago...

[jhitchin.livejournal.com]

I was at a Ren Faire once with the Seattle Knights and was giving our website address to a lady who stopped me and said, "We don't allow our children to go on the internet because 'WWW' is Hebrew for 666."

[worldmage.livejournal.com]

I've known that the Book of the Revelation of St. John is one big-ass Qabalistic cipher for about 5 years now, but I never knew that bit about Nero. Fascinating.

BTW, 'ayin isn't necessarily silent. In standard Hebrew it's a voiced pharyngeal fricative (ʕ in IPA), but Jews of European descent usually pronounce it as a glottal stop before a vowel.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The Phonecians seem to have taken the basic forms from the Egyptians, simplified them, and spread them to a whole bunch of other cultures, including the Hebrews. Incidentaly, another name for the Phonecians is the "Caananites". Yup, my ancestors brutally slaughtered the advanced civilization which invented writing and long-distance trade.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's why I listed it as "silent, basically." However, Jews of European descent, that is, Ashkenazic Jews, do use it as a simple silent letter, which is also how it is used in modern Israeli Hebrew. Sephardic Jews tend to pronounce it as a semiglottal stop, or simply have it gutteralize the vowel. The voiced pharyngeal fricative is only used by Yemini Jews, although it's likely to be close to how it was used originally, and the cognate to 'ayin in Arabic is that way.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Damn, there goes my theory for Ronald Wilson Reagan.

*sigh*

[kelfstein.livejournal.com]

Since I don't have a clue, did or do the Ethiopian Jews still speak Hebrew? If so, how would they pronounce the silent letter?
Interesting subject.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. But it only works if 'NERO CAESAR' was written in Hebrew (or Aramaic, which was the language of everyday life and used the same alphabet) at the time. Since it was pronounced in Latin more like ... mmm...

--IPA: [nerokɑɪsɑr]

--English approximation: nay-roe k-eye-sahr

... I'd expect the Hebrew to have a yod in it for the offglide in "Cae".


-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody

[marquisedea.livejournal.com]

I give this post a huge thumbs up for educating me!

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

Thank God I'm not the only one who knows this and is tired of the hype. Oh, 'cept that it's Revelation. No "s."

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

It actually works if you assume the audience speaks Hebrew. Which is what the writer of the book of Revelation would have assumed.

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

Add in that at the time he was the focus of a mystery cult that believed he would rise from the dead.

And the references to horsemen sweeping out of the east? There was a tribe (actually one of the kewl things in the King Arthur movie was that this was the tribe they had Lancelot from) about whom at the time Revelation was composed there were a lot of from-the-battle-front rumors about these guys royally kicking Imperial Army Ass. So this was a "You've heard of these guys, right? Lemme tell you something.... God sent them... yeah, they're gonna kick Roman butt and not bother with names. Just hang in there, guys... we haven't gotta put up with this BS for much longer."


And a lot of the absolutely weirdest imagery is actually inherited from older prophetic works like Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. There are a few passages where if you do some comparison... it seems there apparently was a tradition of going back to an earlier prophetic work.... taking some imagery that was giving a similar message to what you were trying to say this time.... filing off a couple serial numbers.... adjusting things a touch.... and voila! A vision with teeth.

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

The basic message of the 'prophetic' works is "Yeah, these times, lo do they sucketh mightily. Not gonna lie to you, things bite the big one right now. But I'm telling you.... if we just hang in there and stay true, God's gonna come in with the big guns and make these guys regret ever messing with us. Any day now he's gonna be kicking in the door. And boy.... you do not want to be in the shoes of our oppressers when he does... I mean.... the things God is gonna do to them? It's gonna be real nasty. We just gotta hang in a little longer and stay faithful to our Law. Don't give up on me now. You can do it." The rest is mostly window dressing.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But, as you know, once a word makes it into reasonably common usage in another language, it rarely keeps precisely the same pronounciation. As I understand it, we have other examples of writing showing that that's how it was spelled.

[sethg]

Aleph was, once upon a time, a non-silent letter (some kind of glottal stop, but different from ayin). I have heard (although I couldn't give you a page citation) that the Talmud says somewhere that a cohen who can't pronounce the difference between לא and לו isn't allowed to bless the congregation.

[navrins]

Or, for a completely different take:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OftwKZtwSfE

(note my name in the credits)

[sethg]

The Ethiopian Jews use Ge'ez for liturgical purposes, not Hebrew.

The Yemenite Jews are believed to have the closest approximation of ancient Hebrew pronounciation (they were so shunned by their neighbors that they didn't have much chance for their Hebrew to be corrupted).

[sethg]

$ grep 666 /etc/services
ircd            6667/tcp                        # Internet Relay Chat

[sethg]

According to DovBear, some Jews of the era referred to Nero as נרון קסר, which adds up to the 666 that other manuscripts use.

[jhitchin.livejournal.com]

Like we didn't already know that. :-)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

If the audience speaks Hebrew AND if the author expected them to spell NERO CAESAR that way, without a yod. If you're willing to assume misspellings you can get anything to mean anything.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

The added final nun (N) makes sense. How? Because that makes the ROOT of Nero: Nero, Neron-is... This is common in Latin, Greek, and other inflected languages.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Great icon, by the way!

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

Danke!

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

Also, the writer doesn't seem to have been exceedingly well educated, given the grammar and word choices in the Greek. The lack of a yod . . . well, spelling mistakes aren't uncommon when someone is only functionally literate.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Ничего!

I've grabbed it and would like to use it. Did you make it?

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

Nope. Got it from a random online "source for all things icon-y." You are welcome to it.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

tibi gratias ago, domina

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

I've heard the 616 part several times now, but have never seen any documentation. Can you tell me where I could look it up, and maybe the reasons for the change? Was it a mistake or a deliberate alteration?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's how it was spelled. It's pretty clear that that was the intended meaning by the author.

"Caeser"

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

When used by itself as a title or job description, then indeed Caesar, as you say, is spelled with an yud and pronounced accordingly with a long 'ay' vowel - Kaysarr. BUT when used in conjunction with specific names, especially Nero and Julius ("Yoo-le-oos"), it is often spelled without the yud and pronounced Kessarr, with an 'eh' segol vowel, so this would fit.

xiphias, I have no idea why you say that in modern Hebrew the ayin is mostly silent. While not quite as strong as the Yemenite guttural, it is still definitely present. Don't forget that about half of all Israelis are Sephardi, who did retain the proper atin to varying degrees.

I must be missing something here...

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

You wrote
The Book of Revelations is clear that "616" refers to a person's name. So you need to find a name, or name and title, which adds up to 616.

So we're looking for some name/title whose Gematria is 616. So far, so good.

How about קסר נרו ? That's 50+200+6 + 100+60+200 = 616. What are the English equivalents of those letters? NRV QSR. Of course, that "V" may be a "W", a "U" or an "O", and we need to add vowels.

NRO QSR. NeRO CaeSaR.

Hard to argue with that one. Emperor Nero pretty much deserved the title of "the Beast", and, for that matter, was the Emperor when the Book of Revelations was written.

So we have a good candidate... if that's how CAESAR was spelled in Hebrew at the time. In later discussion, kahnman has said that it was spelled that way, in this context, so we have our case.

But I didn't know that before tonight's login, and I took what you just said above -- That's how it was spelled. It's pretty clear that that was the intended meaning by the author. -- as begging the question (in the original sense): arguing in a circle by bringing in as evidence the point one is trying to prove.

Anyway, I didn't mean to get into an argument, or start one.

("Yes, you did!"
"This isn't Monty Python."
"It isn't?"
"Shut up, Loiosh.")

Thanks for all of this.

[kelfstein.livejournal.com]

Thank you, the wikipedia info was interesting. I like to learn something new every day.

Re: I must be missing something here...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Largely, because the whole thing is pretty clearly a polemic against the Roman Empire, so therefore your first candidate for the role of "the Beast" would pretty much have to be the head of the Empire. . .

Whack Loiosh for me, willya? But, y'know, in an affectionate way.

[sproutntad.livejournal.com]

Poor aleph, he can't speak..... Mmmmm, good soup! (Sorry only Ian will get this, but rest assured, he's laughing :)

[cheshyre]

Hey! I get it!
But only through osmosis (or is that Osmond-osis?)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Wincing, actually.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

It's Kaf that has two sounds, not Kof(nor Kuf).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's what the chart says.

My Inaugural Address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead

[alienspaceman.livejournal.com]

My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions!
Read My Inaugural Address (http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman/inaugural.html)
My Site=http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman (http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman/)