Hand-to-Hand Combat: Sinaiticus vs. Textus Receptus in Rev. 22

            It is often claimed that the text in older manuscripts is more accurate than the text in younger manuscripts.  At first glance, this makes sense:  fewer years implies fewer opportunities for copyists to corrupt the text.  But upon more careful consideration, it does not make sense, except as a general consideration:  what matters is not whether scribes had those opportunities for corruption, but whether they used them. 

            Confirmation that the text of an early manuscript can be more corrupt than the text in a later manuscript has already been provided here in the Hand-to-Hand Combat series of posts.  In each of those twelve posts, the text of an older manuscript was compared to the text of a younger manuscript, using the NA27 compilation as the standard of comparision. 

● In Matthew 24:23-30, minuscule 2474’s text is more accurate than the text in Codex Sinaiticus.  Sinaiticus has 59 letters’ worth of corruption; 25 letters’ worth when itacisms and trivial variants are removed from consideration.  2474 has 14 letters’ worth of corruption; 5 letters’ worth when itacisms and trivial variants are removed from consideration.           

● In Luke 2:1-12, Vaticanus’ text is more accurate than the text in minuscule 1295, but the text in 1295 is more accurate than the text in Sinaiticus.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, B has 18 letters’ worth of corruption, 1295 has 28 letters’ worth of corruption, and À has 44 letters’ worth of corruption.  

● In Colossians 3:1-11, the text of minuscule 6 is more accurate than the texts in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.    The text of minuscule 2401 is more accurate than the text in B.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, B has 25 letters’ worth of corruption; 2401 has 24; Sinaiticus has 31, and minuscule 6 has 15.

● In First Corinthians 15:1-11, the text of minuscule 384 is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 46.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, 384 has 9 letters’ worth of difference from the NA text, the text in P46 has 14 or 15 letters’ worth of corruption.   

● In Luke 8:19-25, the text of Codex Alexandrinus is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 75.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, P75’s text has 29 letters’ worth of corruption; Codex A’s text has 18 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In Luke 8:19-25, the text of minuscule 1324 is far more accurate than the text of Codex Bezae.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, Codex Bezae has 83 letters’ worth of corruption, while the text of 1324 has 39.   

● In Jude, the text of minuscule 6 is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 72.  Minuscule 6 has 157 letters’ worth of corruption, but the text of Papyrus 72 has 399 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In Acts 18:27-19:6, the text of minuscule 2401 is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 38.  2401 has 29 letters’ worth of corruption; Papyrus 38 has 152 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In Mark 4:1-9, the text of minuscule 545 is more accurate than the text of Codex W.    The text in minuscule 545 has 88 letters’ worth of corruption, but Codex W’s text has 258 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In John 15:1-9, the text of minuscule 2222 is more accurate than the text of Codex A.    Both of these manuscripts are very accurate in this passage, but when minor variants are taken into consideration 2222 has 11 letters’ worth of corruption, and Codex A has 30 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In John 6:65-7:16, the text of minuscule 4 is more accurate than the text of Codex Sinaiticus.  Minuscule 4’s text has 106 letters’ worth of corruption, but the text in Sinaiticus has 122 letters’ worth of corruption.   

● In First Peter 5, the text of minuscule 496 is more accurate than the text of Codex Vaticanus.  Minuscule 496 has 75 letters’ worth of corruption, but the text in Vaticanus has 110 letters’ worth of corruption.   

            Today, let’s add one more comparison to those twelve, by comparing the text of Revelation 22:10-21 in the oldest manuscript of this passage – Codex Sinaiticus – to the text of Revelation 22:10-21 in the Textus Receptus.   This particular part of the Textus Receptus is somewhat notorious, because when Erasmus produced the Textus Receptus, he had only one Greek manuscript of Revelation on hand, and it was missing the final six verses of the book.  With nothing to go on except his memory, a revised Vulgate text, and the notes of Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus resorted to retro-translating the text from Latin into Greek, so as to finish the compilation. 

            It ought to be a foregone conclusion, then, that Sinaiticus has a better text of Revelation 22:10-21 than the Textus Receptus has.  But just to make sure, here’s a comparison of both texts to the contents of Revelation 22:10-21 as printed in the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament:

Codex Sinaiticus’ text of Revelation 22:10-21 differs from the text in THEGNT at the following points:

10 - ℵ reads τουτους after λογους (+7)

11 – no variation

12 - ℵ reads αποδοθηναι instead of αποδουναι (+2, -1)

13 – no variation

14 – ℵ reads ως δε η εξουσια before επι το ζυλον (+12)

15 – ℵ transposes so as to read, in the final phrase, ποιων και φιλων ψευδος.

16 – no variation

17 – ℵ reads π before the sacred-name contraction for πνευμα (+1)

17 - ℵ does not read η before νυμφη (-1)

18 – ℵ reads η at the beginning of the verse (+1)

18 – ℵ does not include επιθησει επ’ αυτον (-15)

19 – ℵ reads αν instead of εαν (-1)

19 – ℵ reads τουτων after λόγων (+6)

19 – ℵ reads προφητιας instead of προφητειας (-1)

19 – ℵ reads αφελι instead of αφελει after ταυτης (-1)

20 – ℵ reads λεγι instead of λεγει at the beginning of the verse (-1)

20 – ℵ reads ειναι after ταυτα (+5)

20 – ℵ does not have αμήν after ταχυ (-4)

21 – no variation

            This yields a total of 33 non-original letters present, and 25 original letters absent, for a total of 58 letters’ worth of corruption.

            When itacisms and similar inconsequential corruptions are set aside, the amount of non-trivial corruption in Sinaiticus in Rev. 22:10-21 consists of 32 non-original letters present, and 21 original letters absent, for a total of 53 letters’ worth of corruption.

Now let’s see how the Textus Receptus does (using Scrivener’s edition):

10 – TR reads οτι after τουτου (+3)

10 – TR does not have γαρ after καιρος (-3)

11 – TR reads ρυπων instead of ρυπαρος (+2, -4)

11 – TR reads δικαιωθητω instead of δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω (+5, -14)

12 – TR reads και at the beginning of the verse (+3)

12 – TR does not have εστιν after εργον (-5)

12 – TR has εσται after αυτου (+5)

13 – TR has ειμι after εγω (+4)

13 – TR has the letter α rather than the word αλφα

13 – TR does not have η before αρχη (-1)

13 – TR transposes the final two phrases

14 – TR reads ποιουντες τας εντολας αυτου instead of πλυνοντες τας στολας αυτων (+9, -8)

15 – TR has δε after εξω (+2)

15 – TR has ο before φιλων (+1)

16 – TR has του after γενος (+3)

16 – TR has Δαβιδ instead of Δαυιδ (+1, -1)

16 – TR has και after λαμπρος (+3)

16 – TR has ορθρινος instead of πρωϊνος (+4, -3)

17 – TR has ελθε instead of ερχου after λεγουσιν (+3, -4)

17 – TR has ελθε instead of ερχου after ειπατω (+3, -4)

17 – TR has ελθε instead of ερχέσθω (+3, -6)

17 – TR has και before ο θελων (+3)

17 – TR has λαμβανετω instead of λαβέτω (+3)

17 = TR has το before υδωρ (+2)

18 – TR has συμμαρτυρουμαι γαρ instead of μαρτυρω εγω (+11, -4)

18 – TR does not have τω after παντι (-2)

18 – TR has επιτιθη instead of επιθη (+2)

18 – TR has προς ταυτα instead of επ’ αυτα (+5, -2)

18 – TR transposes so as to read ο θεος επ αυτον

18 – TR does not have τω before βιβλιω (-2)

19 – TR does not include τις (-3)

19 – TR reads αφαιρη instead of αφέλη (+3, -2)

19 – TR does not include του (-3) before βιβλίου (-3)

19 – TR reads βιβλου instead of βιβλίου (-1)

19 – TR reads αφαιρησει instead of αφελει (+5, -2)

19 – TR reads βιβλου instead of του ξυλου (+4, -6)

19 – TR reads και after αγιας (+3)

19 – TR does not have τω before βιβλιω (-2)

20 – TR reads ναι after αμην (+3)

21 – TR reads ημων after κυριου (+4)

21 – TR reads χριστου after ιησου (+7)

21 – TR reads παντων υμων instead of των αγίων (+10, -8)

            This yields a total of 110 non-original letters present, and 83 original letters absent, for a total of 193 letters’ worth of corruption in the Textus Receptus in Revelation 22:10-21.  Finally, Codex Sinaiticus wins a round of hand-to-hand combat, by the overwhelming score of 58 to 193!

            But Sinaiticus was not really going up against another manuscript in verses 16-21; its opponent was Erasmus’ Greek reconstruction.  What happens when we look at Rev. 22:10-21 in an intact medieval minuscule?  Perhaps we might do exactly that in a future round of hand-to-hand combat.

Readers are invited to double-check the data in the post.

The stewards of the Codex Sinaiticus website are also invited to fix their website.

Erasmus' Manuscript of Revelation

            Erasmus’ first edition of the printed Greek New Testament – it was released by the printer Johann Froben in 1516 – has several famous features.  One of them involves the way Erasmus treated the last six verses of Revelation.  Erasmus had only one Greek manuscript of Revelation when he compiled the text for his Novum Instrumentum (the official name of the first edition):  GA 2814, which had been loaned to Erasmus by Johann Reuchlin.  (For a long time, this manuscript was simply referred to as manuscript 1r.)

            Page-views of the entire manuscript can be now accessed at the website of the library of the University of Augsburg.  (You may need to reload the page once or twice to get to the page-views.)  

A page (31v) of the manuscript
of Revelation used by Erasmus,
now at the University of Augsburg.

            (Shown:  part of Andreas of Caesarea’s commentary, followed by Rev. 8:13, followed by some commentary and a heading (in red), followed by Rev. 9:1-5a.  (The text is accompanied in the margin by red > marks.)  Notice the textual variant in 8:13:  this manuscript reads αγγελου (“angel”) although the Byzantine text (and the Nestle-Aland compilation) reads αετου (“eagle”).  Oikoumenios (keep reading for more information about him) also used the reading “eagle” in his commentary on Revelation, stating, “The eagle in midheaven, looking sadly at the misfortunes of those on earth, you will understand is a kind of divine angel sympathizing with the plight of human beings.” (Cf. John N. Suggit’s translation.)   

            If you consult the final pages of the manuscript, you can see that at the foot of fol. 92v, most of the text of Rev. 22:16 appears, interrupted by, and followed by, Andreas’ commentary – and on the next extant page (93r), we find ourselves in the summary of the contents of Revelation with which Andreas ended his commentary.  On 93v, Andreas’ review of the contents of Revelation continues, and then on 94r, in entirely different handwriting (as if someone had noticed that the manuscript had been damaged, and made this replacement-page, although the entire loss was not detected), we find the last words of Andreas’ commentary.   There are a few more pages, but they are blank.  (It looks like 95v may have been prepared to hold a framed illustration which was never added.)    

           

            This fits the description that was supplied by Erasmus regarding the manuscript that he used as the main basis for his compilation of the text of Revelation.  Erasmus mentioned that he used a Greek manuscript which was deficient at the end:  in the course of correspondence with Edward Lee, Erasmus wrote: 

            In calce Apocalypsis in exemplari, quod tum nobis erat unicum, nam is liber apud Graecos rarus est inventu, deerat unus atque alter versus.  Eos nos addidimus secuti Latinos codices.  Et erant ejusmodi, ut ex his quae praecesserant possent reponi. 

            That is, in English:  “At the end of my exemplar of Revelation – of which I had only one, because Greek copies of this book are rare – a few lines were missing.  I added them, using Latin copies as the basis.  These lines were of the sort that could be reconstructed [in Greek] by consulting the preceding text.” 

            This accounts for the very unusual Greek text of Revelation 22:16b-21 in Erasmus’ compilation.  For these verses, Erasmus took in hand a copy of the Vulgate, and translated its Latin text of Revelation 22:16b-21 into Greek (beginning with ὁ ἀστήρ). 

            Erasmus’ reconstruction of this passage, however, does not match up with any Greek manuscripts at several points (at least, not with any Greek manuscripts made prior to his compilation).  Although the Textus Receptus went through several revisions in the 1500s, Erasmus’ retro-translation of Revelation 22:16b-21 survived the process; as a result, the Textus Receptus continues to perpetuate some Greek readings in this passage that originated with Erasmus.  Bruce Metzger (in a footnote on page 100 of The Text of the New Testament, third edition) wrote about some of them: 

            “For example ἀκαθάρτητος (Rev. xvii. 4; there is, however, no such word in the Greek language as ἀκαθάρτης, meaning ‘uncleanness’); ὀρθρινός (xxii. 16); ἐλθέ twice, ἐλθέτω (xxii. 17); συμμαρτυροῦμαι γάρ . . . ἐπιτιθῇ πρὸς ταῦτα (xxii. 18); ἀφαιρῇ βίβλου . . . ἀφαιρήσει (future for ἀφελεῖ!!), βίβλου (second occurrence) (xxii. 19); ὑμῶν (xxii. 21).”

            How significant are these variations?  Almost all of them are trivial.  If one takes in hand the KJV and the NASB, and compares the two, it appears that the most of the new readings invented by Erasmus made no difference in translation: 

            v. 18:  KJV:  “For” / NASB does not have “For.”

            v. 19:  KJV:  “the book of life” / NASB:  “the tree of life”

            v. 19:  KJV:  “and from the things which are written” / NASB:  “which are written.”  (That is, in the KJV, three things are referred to:  the book of life, the holy city, and the things written in this book.  Whereas in the NASB, two things are referred to:  the book of life and the holy city, which are written about in this book.)

            v. 20:  KJV:  “Even so, come” / NASB:  does not have “Even so.”      

            v. 21:  KJV:  “our Lord Jesus Christ” / NASB:  “the Lord Jesus.” 

            v. 21:  KJV:  “you all” / NASB:  “all.”

            Only the difference between “tree of life” and “book of life” yields a significant change to the meaning of the text.  Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (albeit not in all editions), proposed a theory to account for this:  “The corruption of “tree” into “book” had occurred earlier in the transmission of the Latin text when a scribe accidentally miscopied the correct word ligno (“tree”) as libro (“book”).” 

           If Metzger’s theory is true, the confusion between ligno and libro may have occurred much earlier – early enough to affect some early Latin texts and the Bohairic version.  All Greek manuscripts of Revelation, however – at least, all Greek manuscripts prior to Erasmus’ printed text – support the reading “tree of life.”

           

            Some more information about Erasmus’ manuscript of Revelation may be helpful.  For many years after Erasmus used it, its location was not publicly known, and there was some concern that it had been lost.  In 1861, however, it turned up, and the scholar who discovered it – Franz Delitsch – wrote a detailed essay (in German) describing its readings, and showing how tightly its contents match up with Erasmus’ compilation, leaving no doubt that it was indeed Codex Reuchlins, the manuscript used by Erasmus.  It was later given a new identification-number (GA 2814).  

           Accompanying the text of Revelation in 2814 is a commentary which was composed by archbishop Andreas of Caesarea in 611.  Contrary to a recent claim made by James White, this commentary is not written in Latin; it is Greek.  Prior to Andreas of Caesarea (this Caesarea is the same place as Kayseri in Turkey, not the Caesarea on the coast of Israel), a writer named Oikoumenios had also written a commentary on Revelation, in the late 500s.  The work of Oikoumenios was known to Andreas; he refers to it repeatedly.  There is not a lot of data about the setting in which Oikoumenios wrote, but one of his statements indicates the time when he wrote:  he stated specifically that more than 500 years had passed since John wrote the book of Revelation.  The time between the composition of Oikoumenios’ commentary, and the commentary by Andreas, cannot have been great. 

            Andreas’ commentary became something of a standard work. (Meanwhile the Latin commentary on Revelation by the fourth-century writer Tyconius similarly was widely used, despite Tyconius’ Donatist views.)  It was often copied with the text of Revelation itself, in a specialized format, which Metzger described in The Text of the New Testament:  “He divided the book into twenty-four λόγοι, or discourses, because of the twenty-four elders sitting on thrones about the throne of God (Rev. iv. 4).  He further reflected that the nature of each of the twenty-four elders was tripartite (σῶμα, ψυχή, and πνεῦμα), and therefore divided each λόγος into three κεφάλαια, making a total of seventy-two chapters for the entire book.”

            An English translation of Andreas’ commentary on Revelation, with an insightful introduction, was recently completed by Eugenia Constantinou.  It can be downloaded for free – although you might have to spend a few minutes tracking it down from a large collection of academic papers.  It is also available to purchase as a paper book.   The Greek text of Andreas’ commentary, extracted from Volume 106 of Migne’s Patrologia Graece series, is also online.                   

      

   

Post-script

            Some writers who tend to defend the Textus Receptus, such as Thomas Holland and Chris Thomas, have insisted that Erasmus did not reconstruct Revelation 22:16-21 from Latin, or at least that there is little evidence for such a reconstruction.  Jan Krans has issued a detailed and remarkably effective reply, and his general conclusions are confirmed beyond all doubt by the examination of the online page-views of 2814.

Revelation 13:18 and the Number of the Beast

          One of the most well-known textual variants in the book of Revelation occurs in 13:18:  “Here is wisdom.  Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.  His number is” – and that’s where the variant-unit occurs.  Almost all Greek manuscripts of Revelation have exakosioi exhkonta ex, that is, six hundred + sixty + six, for a total of 666.  However, in Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C, 04), produced in the 400’s, the number of the beast is, instead, exakosioi deka ex, that is, six hundred + ten + six, for a total of 616.

           To understand Revelation 13:18, it is helpful to know Greek isopsephy, or gematria – the ancient method of writing numerals in the Roman Empire in the first century.  The 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, plus three obsolete letters (for 6, 90, and 900), were arranged in an array of ones, tens, and hundreds, so as to facilitate the representation of any quantity from 1 to 999.  Thus every combination of letters in every word could be said to have a numerical value.  Jesus’ name in Greek, for example, consisted of the letters iota, eta, sigma, omicron, upsilon, and sigma, and thus has a numerical value of 888 (10 + 8 + 200 + 70 + 400 + 200).  The Greek word for “Lord,” Κυριος, has a numerical value of 800 (20 + 400 +100 +10 + 70 + 200).

          Papyrus 115 (a collection of extremely mutilated fragments, produced c. 250) is one of the earliest manuscripts of this portion of the book of Revelation.  Its text of Revelation 13:18 is unique:  it has what appears to be the reading 616 (written in Greek numerals, that is, Greek letters with horizontal lines above them to show that they are intended to be understood as numerals), preceded by the letter h which, standing alone, is the Greek word “or,” which may indicate that in the preceding part of the line, the manuscripts may have combined both readings, so as to read “666 or 616.”

Part of P115:  "or 616."

           Papyrus 47 (produced in the 200’s) is another very early manuscript of Revelation.  Its text of 13:18 contains the usual reading expressed in numerals:  chi (600) + xi (60) + stau (6).  (The obsolete letter stau is also known stigma, or as digamma when written in a different form resembling the capital English letter F.) 

          Although P47 and P115 were probably both produced less than 200 years after the book of Revelation was written, there is earlier evidence for the existence of manuscripts with the reading “666” and for manuscripts with the reading “616.”  Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum (Lyons) in what is now southeast France, commented on Revelation 13:18 in Against Heresies, Book 5, chapters 29-30.   In chapter 30, as Irenaeus focuses on the meaning of the number of the beast, he mentions that six-hundred-and-sixty-six is the number that is “found in all the most approved and ancient copies,” and he states that “those men who saw John face to face” have testified to its genuineness. 

P47 (Replica):  666 (in the middle of line 4).

          Irenaeus continued with a long note in which he mentioned the alternate-reading 616 and declared it to be a corruption:  “I do not know how it is that some have erred following the ordinary mode of speech, and have vitiated the middle number in the name, deducting the amount of fifty from it, so that instead of six decads they will have it that there is but one.  [I am inclined to think that this occurred through the fault of the copyists, as is wont to happen, since numbers also are expressed by letters; so that the Greek letter which expresses the number sixty was easily expanded into the letter Iota of the Greeks.]  Others then received this reading without examination; some in their simplicity, and upon their own responsibility, making use of this number expressing one decad; while some, in their inexperience, have ventured to seek out a name which should contain the erroneous and spurious number.” (The bracketed portion is not in the Greek text preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea, and is probably an interpolation.)

          How exactly does one get from ΧΞϜ to ΧΙϜ?  That is, how could a copyist confuse the letters Ξ and Ι?  One can only guess.  A careless mistake by an inattentive or hurried copyist is not impossible.  Perhaps the copyist of a very early copy, writing by dictation, heard his supervisor pronounce the letters individually, and wrote ΧΙ as the name of the first character, misheard the second character as if it were the first one again, and then wrote the stau, or stigma.  

           Another possibility is that a copyist, thinking that he had deciphered the meaning of John’s statement, and that the leader of the beast was Nero, or someone with a Nero-like character, adjusted the number to make that identification a little easier to perceive.  The Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Edward Cook explained this idea at his blog in 2006:  if one utilizes a Hebrew, rather than Greek, form of isopsephy, then the total numerical value of the letters in “Neron Caesar” is 666.  (This Hebrew form of Nero’s name appears in a scroll that was produced during the reign of Nero himself.)  A slight simplification – dropping the final Nun – simultaneously dropped 50 from the numerical value of the name, thus arriving at the alternative total of 616.

            Yet another possibility is that an early interpreter of Revelation identified the Antichrist as one of the Roman emperors, or as the Emperorship in a collective sense.  The letters in the name Gaios Kaisar (that is, Caligula, who was emperor in 37-41) add up to 616, and, as Adolph Deissmann pointed out, so do the letters in the Greek words for “divine Caesar” – Kaisar Theos. 

           In the period after Nero’s death there was a concern that Nero might not be completely dead, and that he would revive and return to power after gathering an army from the east, particularly Parthia.  This idea was promoted in the second century by one of the unknown authors of the Sibylline Oracles, who wrote (referring to Nero), “The reprobate man shall disappear, and afterwards he shall return, equaling himself with God, but his pretensions God shall refute.”  This idea was shared by the unknown author of the Ascension of Isaiah (in its Christianized edition).  In the 200’s, Commodianus (in Instructions #41) also stated that in the end-times, “Nero shall have been raised from the underworld.”  This idea was also promoted in the late 200’s by Victorinus of Pettau, who wrote a commentary on Revelation.  Referring to Rev. 13:3, Victorinus wrote that John “speaks of Nero.  For it is plain that when the cavalry sent by the senate was pursuing him, he himself cut his throat.  This man, therefore, resuscitated, God will send as a worthy king to those who deserve him.”  

           Augustine (in his book City of God, Book 20, chapter 19) mentioned that some of his contemporaries (in the early 400’s) imagined that Nero was still alive, diabolically endowed with longevity and vigor, waiting for the opportunity to rise to power.  Augustine regarded such a view as an audacious presumption.

           In the early Middle Ages (specifically, in the 700’s) Beatus of Liebana recycled much of Victorinus’ commentary, and likewise affirmed that the seven kings mentioned in 17:11 were seven Roman Emperors (starting with Nero).  Beatus seems to have maintained that Nero was a model, or “pre-figure,” of the Antichrist.   

          Irenaeus seems to have been completely unaware of any proposed connection between Nero and the Antichrist.  Instead, Irenaeus understood the “number of the beast” to be the numerical value of the Greek letters in the name of the Antichrist.  (The numerical value of the name “Neron” is 1,005, or 955 without the final N, which eliminates him from consideration if one limits oneself to Greek isopsephy, which seems reasonable considering that the book of Revelation was written in Greek.)   Although Irenaeus insisted that no one should insist on a specific identification – on the grounds that if God had wanted the name, rather than the number, to be known, it would have been stated plainly – he ventured a few guesses, using the usual Greek isopsephy, mentioning “Lateinos” and “Euanthas” but favoring “Teitan” as his best guess. 

          “Lateinos” may be understood as “the Latins,” i.e., the Romans, whose empire Irenaeus recognized as the fourth kingdom envisioned by Daniel.  “Teitan” is another way to spell “Titan,” which Irenaeus explains as the name of a tyrant (possibly alluding to the emperor Titus), and as an ancient name used by pagans to identify the sun-god.  However, Irenaeus offered no explanation for the name “Euanthas.”   Beatus (whose comments we will revisit shortly) had this word in mind when he stated that one of the seven names of the Antichrist is “Evantas, which is called ‘serpent’ in Latin, for the one who deceived Eve first.” 

           A different theory about the origin of the term “Euanthas” was offered in 1915 by F. H. Colson in a brief article in the Journal of Theological Studies.  Colson proposed that “Euanthas” is the result of an attempt to translate the Latin name of Gessius Florus, the last Roman procurator of Judea (in A.D. 64-66), into a Greek equivalent.  Florus’ tyrannical behavior provoked the First Jewish Revolt; he seized temple-donations and crucified protesters.  If this is the source of the name Euanthas, then it may echo an early understanding of Revelation 13 as a description of past, rather than exclusively future, events.       

           Medieval commentators on the book of Revelation proposed several other names and descriptions of the Antichrist based on the numerical values of the letters in his name.  Primasius, an African bishop who lived in the 500’s, proposed the names “Antemos” and “Arnoume,” which mean “Contrary to honor” and “I deny” – the latter being the words which Christians, when tested by persecutors, were tempted to say in order to deny Christ. 

           Andrew of Caesarea, and/or Oecumenius (it is not entirely clear which writer used the other writer’s work around the year 600) calculated the numerical values of some descriptive names or titles:  Lampetis and Benediktos and Palaibaskanos (“ancient sorcerer”) and O Niketes (“The Conqueror” or “Victorious One”) and Kakos Hodegos (“foul leader”) and Amnos Adikos (“unrighteous lamb”) each adds up to 666.

           Beatus, relying on earlier writers, listed seven names for the Antichrist, in light of the statement in Revelation 13:1 which states that the beast in the vision had seven heads, “and on his heads was a blasphemous name.”  In some manuscripts of Revelation in which the text is accompanied by Beatus’ commentary, there are full-page charts and tables listing the names assigned to the Antichrist, and illustrating the numerical values of their letters.  The names and their meanings are listed are as follows:  

Morgan MS 1079 contains a good example of
Beatus' chart of the names of the Antichrist.

Evantas – (From Irenaeus) Either “serpent,” or a translation of the name Florus, the Roman procurator who incited the First Jewish Revolt.  (5+400+1+50+9+1+200 = 666)

Damnatos – he who causes condemnation.  (4+1+40+50+1+300+70+200 = 666)

Antemos – he who abstains from wine.  (1+50+300+5+40+70+200 = 666) 

Genserikos – This name, from the commentary of Victorinus of Pettau (who was martyred in the Diocletian persecution), described simply as another name for the Antichrist in Gothic.  One might be forgiven for thinking that it is an interpolation, inasmuch as about 150 years after Victorinus, there was a historical figure named Genseric, king of the Vandals, who sacked the city of Rome in 455.  (The name Gensērikos does happen to add up to 666:  3 + 5 + 50 + 200 + 8 + 100 + 10 + 20 + 70 + 200.) 

Antichristos – (self-explanatory) 

Teitan – (from Irenaeus) Titan

Diclux – (from Victorinus) A Latin name (with Latin numerical values:  D+I+C+L+V+X = 666) based on the identification of Teitan as the sun:  “Say ‘light,’” meaning that the Antichrist will imitate the devil who masquerades as an angel of light.

A list of the names of Antichrist,
from B.L. Add. MS 11695
(The Silos Apocalypse).

          From the second century onward, Revelation 13:18 has been understood as a reference to the numerical value of the letters in the name of the Antichrist.  Although the number 616 has some early support, Irenaeus’ testimony in favor of 666 has tremendous weight:  not only is he the earliest writer to comment on the verse, but he specifically states that he consulted ancient manuscripts – ancient in the 180’s! – to confirm that they did indeed have the number 666.  Therefore, the reading “666” should confidently be regarded as the original text. 

           The exact identification of the name with the numerical value of 666 remains unknown.  It may be as helpful to know what this number does not represent as it is to know the name on which it is based.  The number has no necessary connection to microchips, its second digit (the Greek letter xi) is not “the symbol of the snake” as alleged recently by Hank Hanegraaff, it has nothing to do with the logo of an energy drink, and if you happen to make a purchase for $6.66 there is no reason to panic.  For the first generation of Christians who read the book of Revelation, the text was a source of encouragement to faithfully refuse to deny Christ, even when the Roman government was demanding that they worship the emperor and thus obtain a libellus, an official certificate stating that its bearer had sacrificed to the image of the emperor (or to his patron deities).  Faithfulness, rather than exhaustive knowledge of future events, was what John desired to instill in his readers. 

A libellus from
the reign of Decius.

          It is commendable for students of the Scriptures to investigate the things therein which appear less than perfectly clear, such as the identity of the person whose name has the value of 666, but it is also commendable, considering the explorations that others have already made into the subject, to acknowledge that it is wiser to avoid being dogmatically and insistently wrong, than to have confidence in a particular solution simply for the sake of appearing confident.  Whatever name is represented by that number, the name that we should bear is the name of Jesus Christ.  In our deeds and in our words and in our study, and in every circumstance, let us faithfully affirm that we belong to Jesus Christ.  As Peter wrote in First Peter 4:16:  “If anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God because of that name.”