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

[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]

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.

[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.

[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).

[kelfstein.livejournal.com]

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