Video Lecture 15: Numerals in Greek New Testament Manuscripts

         

Lecture 15:  Numerals                 

  In Lecture 15 of my ongoing series of video-lectures on YouTube, I discuss Greek numerals, and describe several textual variants in which numerals are involved, at John 19:14, Luke 24:13, Mark 6:41, Acts 27:37, Luke 10:1 and 10:17, Acts 13:33, and Revelation 13:18.

        

               I also describe the Eusebian Canons, and mention a few points in the text where they indicate what kind of text Eusebius was using when he made them.
                (27 minutes 10 seconds) 

An excerpt:

            Before we focus the next two lectures on two major textual variants, there is one small concern that still needs to be covered:  textual variants that involve Greek numerals.  In Greek, numerals were not always written out in full; in some manuscripts, they were represented by letters of the Greek alphabet that represented specific quantities.        

            This was not some sort of secret code; this was the ordinary way of writing numerals in Greek.  This chart shows the 24 usual letters of the Greek alphabet, expanded by the inclusion of three extra letters stau (or, digamma), koppa,  and sampi.  Arranged in three rows of 9 letters, you can see the numerical value that was assigned to each letter: 

Α = 1          Ι = 10          Ρ = 100

Β = 2          Κ = 20        Σ = 200

Γ = 3          Λ = 30        Τ = 300

Δ = 4          Μ = 40       Υ = 400

Ε = 5          Ν = 50        Φ = 500

Ϝ, ϛ = 6      Ξ = 60        Χ = 600

Ζ = 7          Ο = 70        Ψ = 700

Η = 8          Π = 80        Ω, ω = 800

Θ = 9          Ϙ, Ϟ = 90   ϡ = 900

             A horizontal line was added above these letters to show that they were being used as numerals.  Using these letters to represent quantities, any sum from 1 to 999 could be written using no more than three letters.

            With a mark to the lower left of a letter, it signified an amount of thousands.  In manuscripts, large numbers sometimes appear in colophons, or notes, at the end of a book, where they refer to the year in which the manuscript was made.  The standard dating-method in colophons was not a calculation of the number of years from the birth of Christ, but a calculation of the number of years from the creation of the world, which was believed to have happened in 5,508 B.C.  So if we were to encounter a Greek manuscript with a colophon stating that the manuscript was made in the 6,508^th year of the world, we would probably feel justified if we gave it a production-date around the year 1000.

One of the earliest textual variants mentioned by a patristic writer involves the numerals in Mark 15:25 and John 19:14.  Mark 15:25 says, “Now it was the third hour when they crucified Him,” that is, about 9:00 in the morning.  But in John 19:14, John states that it was “about the sixth hour” when Pilate was yet to deliver a sentence regarding Jesus’ case, before he finally handed Jesus over to be crucified in verse 16. 

            Some interpreters have reckoned that John used a different method of hour-counting, starting at midnight, whereas for Mark,  the day have 12 hours and began at the beginning of hour #1.  Thus Pilate could be making his decision at around the sixth hour – 6:00 a.m. – and after he handed Jesus over to be crucified, some time elapsed, during which Jesus was whipped, given a crown of thorns, beaten, and mocked, and was led through the streets of Jerusalem, until, at about the third hour – 9:00 a.m. – He was crucified. 

            But a different solution was proposed by the early writer Ammonius, whose proposal was later echoed by Eusebius of Caesarea in the early 300s, and by Epiphanius of Salamis in the late 300s, and by Jerome.  Ammonius explained that whereas the letter gamma ought to be written, representing the number “three,” so as to refer to the third hour, a copyist wrote the similar-looking letter “gabex,” or digamma, so as to refer instead to the sixth hour. 

Epiphanius indicates that Clement of Alexandria and Origen endorsed this solution to the harmonization-problem.  It is also attributed to Peter of Alexandria, who was martyred in 311.  In Peter of Alexandria’s testimony, preserved in very late manuscripts as part of the Chronicon Paschale, it is stated that in the text that was written by the hand of the evangelist, which is still preserved at Ephesus, and is adored there by the faithful, the reading in John 19:14 is “about the third hour,” and this is the reading in the correct books.

 We don’t know if Peter of Alexandria was making an informed statement or not, but this is interesting evidence no matter how you slice it.  In a small number of manuscripts, the text in John 19:14 supports the reading “the third hour,” including Codex L, Codex Delta, and minuscule 72.  It is significant that in the vast majority of manuscripts, copyists did not give in to the temptation to alter a single letter, or numeral, and thus remove the apparent difficulty. 

Another interesting textual variant involving a numeral occurs in Luke 24:13:  how far was the distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus?  The reading “60 stadia” has broad and early support, and represents a distance of a little less than seven miles.  Codices Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Bezae, Codex W, and most minuscules support this reading, along with the Vulgate, the Peshitta, and the Sahidic versions.  The copyist of Papyrus 75 wrote “60” as an overlined letter, Ξ (chi). 

But some manuscripts, including Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Π, support the reading “160 stadia.”  This was also initially the reading in Codex N.  It is supported by the Armenian version, by the Palestinian Aramaic version, by  the Latin Codex Fuldensis, from the mid-500s, by a small number of Greek minuscules, and by a significant cluster of Arabic manuscripts, and it is endorsed by a margin-note in minuscule 34.

This reading probably reflects a belief that the city of Nicopolis and the village of Emmaus were the same place.  Nicopolis had been destroyed by forces under the Roman general Quintilius Varus in 4 B.C., and it was rebuilt after a group of citizens, led by the patristic writer Julius Africanus, successfully petitioned for its restoration in the days of the emperors Elaga-balus and Severus Alexander, in the 220s and early 230s. 

            Writing after this restoration of the city, Eusebius of Caesarea advocated the view that Nicopolis and Emmaus are the same place in his composition Onomasticon.  Jerome, who made a Latin translation of Eusebius’ Onomasticon, expressed the same view in his Epistle 108 and in his composition Lives of Illustrious Men.  However, 160 stadia is more than 18 miles.   That is a long distance for two people to cover in an afternoon, walking from Jerusalem, and then cover again in the evening, going back to Jerusalem – but it is possible. 

             The view that Nicopolis and Emmaus were synonymous was not exclusive to Caesarea, but seeing it supported in Codex Sinaiticus augments the case that Codex Sinaiticus was produced in that location.

Another interesting textual variant involving numerals appears in Mark 6:41.  The original text, with very broad support, refers specifically to the five loaves and the two fish.  But in Papyrus 45, for some reason, the copyist did not write “five” and he did not write “two” in this verse, even though his text does include the same numbers in verse 38.  Possibly in his exemplar, these words were written as numbers, and the lines above the numerals were very short, and he misunderstood them as if they were dots, that is, as if they were marks that meant, “do not write this.”

Codex Vaticanus is another important manuscript with an unusual reading involving a numeral.  In Acts 27:37, where most manuscripts state that there were 276 souls on board the ship that was about to be shipwrecked.  Codex Vaticanus, however, has “about seventy-six” written out in full.   This is also supported by the Sahidic version.  What has happened here? 

John Burgon perceived the answer:  basically, after a transposition of the words in this part of the verse, the number 276, written as a numeral, that is, as Sigma, Omicron, Stau, followed the phrase “in the ship.”   The letter omega, and the end of the word for “ship,” ploíw, was misread as if it was part of a word, hōs, meaning, “about,” and this left the overlined letters omicron, 70, and stau, six, creating the reading “about 76.”

Burgon also noted, from a common-sense perspective, “Although one might say, ‘about seventy,’ or ‘about eighty,’ is it not obvious to everyone that ‘about 76’ is an impossible expression?”  Fortunately, although Westcott and Hort adopted Vaticanus’ reading, against all other Greek evidence, Burgon’s cogent case against Vaticanus’ reading was favored by later writers, including F. F. Bruce and Bruce Metzger.

Another textual variant that involves numerals is in Luke chapter 10, in verses 1 and 17:  does the Lord sent out 70 individuals, or 72?  The Byzantine reading, 70, is supported by Codex Alexandrinus, Codex W, and almost all other Greek manuscripts.  The Western reading, 72, is supported by Codex Bezae, most of the Old Latin copies, and probably by the Sinaitic Syriac.  The Alexandrian witnesses are divided:  Sinaiticus and Codex C and Codex L support “70,” but Vaticanus and Papyrus 75 support “72.”

Papyrus 45 is not extant in Luke 10:1, but it is extant in verse 17.  Unfortunately, its testimony was misrepresented when the manuscript was first published, and the first printings of the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland text continued to misrepresent it, as if it supports “72.”  This mistake was only recently corrected.  In real life, Papyrus 45 supports “70,” as Bruce Metzger has observed:  the letter Omicron, representing “70,” is not followed by another numeral, but by an ordinary space-filling mark.       

The early writer Tertullian also supports “70,” and he drew a parallel to the numbers in Exodus 15:27, in his composition Against Marcion, at the beginning of chapter 24 of Book 4.  Tertullian says that the 12 springs of water at Elim correspond to the 12 apostles, and the 70 palm trees at Elim correspond to the 70 disciples.

The scope of the support for the reading “70” is sufficient to decide the question.  “72” probably originated as an allegorical representation of the Gentile nations, as listed in the Septuagint in Genesis chapter 10. 

Another textual variation:  In Acts 13:33, where almost all Greek manuscripts say that Paul is quoting from the second Psalm, Codex Bezae says that Paul quoted from the first Psalm.  Somehow this reading survived to the early 1500s in the early editions of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, and was featured in William Tyndale’s English translation in 1526.  It is indirectly supported by some patristic writers.  When Tertullian quoted Psalm 2:7 in Against Marcion, Book 4, chapter 22, he does not describe it as part of the second Psalm; he says that he is quoting from the first Psalm. 

The minority-reading in Codex D may echo the influence of an early tradition that what we know as Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 were considered a single Psalm, with what we know as Psalm 1 being a sort of Preface.  This tradition seems to have had an effect on how the Latin text of Psalms was arranged in the text used by Tertullian in the late 100s, and by Cyprian in the mid-200s, and even as late as the Venerable Bede in the late 600s and early 700s. 

            The best-supported Greek reading is clearly “the second Psalm.”  Some early translators of Acts into Latin probably were comfortable paraphrasing Paul’s reference so as to adopt the arrangement that he expected his readers to recognize.   

Seventh, the most famous textual variant in the New Testament that involves a numeral is without doubt the one that occurs in Revelation 13:18, where the number of the beast is given as 666 in most manuscripts, including Papyrus 47.  But in a few important copies, including Codex C and Papyrus 115, the number in Revelation 13:18 is “616,” written as chi-iota-stau. 

The early patristic writer Irenaeus made a detailed comment on this passage, in what may be the first mention of a textual variant, in Against Heresies, Book Four, chapters 29-30.

            Irenaeus made several guesses about the name that is represented with the numerical value of 666:  Euanthas was one guess, Lateinos was another one, and Teitan was another one.  This last possibility, Teitan, was the option preferred by Irenaeus, but he emphasized that it was only a guess, stating that if it were necessary for people in his time to know the name, it would have been revealed in John’s vision, instead of just the number of the name. 

Irenaeus thus shows that he used the text with “666,” because in each of these names, the value of the letters adds up to a total of six hundred and sixty and six.  And as if more evidence were needed, he also compared this number to Noah’s age before the floor (600 years) and the dimensions of Nebuchadnezzar’s idol in Daniel 3:1:  60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide.

In chapter 30 of Book 5 of Against Heresies, Irenaeus’ statements get even more detailed:  he affirms that 666 is the number that is found “in all the most approved and ancient copies,” and that it is endorsed by “those men who saw John face to face.”  When we consider that when Irenaeus wrote, the book of Revelation was less than 100 years old, this is extremely weighty testimony.

            Irenaeus also stated, “I do not know how it is that some have erred following the ordinary mode of speech, and have reduced the middle number in the name, deducting the amount of fifty from it, so that instead of six tens-units,  they will have it that there is but one.”  To put it another way, Irenaeus refers to approved and ancient copies that support “666,” but he also is aware of copies that have the reading “616.”

He says, “I am inclined to think that this occurred through the fault of the copyists, as it tends 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.”

Irenaeus does not say precisely how the letter chi (Xi, Ξ) be accidentally changed by copyists into iota.  Iota is a straight vertical line, like the letter “I,” but chi is very different. 

            It seems unlikely that a copyist could accidentally make 616 out of 666.  It may be more likely that someone believed that John was referring to the concept of “Nero redivivus,” a sort of urban legend that the Emperor Nero, who died in the year 68, was actually still alive and would one day return, leading an army from the east.  There are some references to this belief in the composition that is known as the Sibylline Oracles, and in about the year 420, Saint Augustine, in City of God, Book 20, mentions a belief that he regarded as an audacious conjecture: 

            Commenting on Second Thessalonians 2:7, Augustine stated that some individuals believe that this verse refers to Nero, whose deeds already seemed to be as the deeds of Antichrist.  And thus, he continues, “some suppose that he shall rise again and be Antichrist.  Others, again, suppose that he is not even dead, but that he was concealed that he might be supposed to have been killed, and that he now lives in concealment, in the vigor of the same age which he had reached when he was believed to have perished, and will live until he is revealed in his own time and restored to him kingdom.”

It is unlikely that anyone encountering the text of Revelation in Greek would stray from the reading “666,” which fits a pattern in which the Antichrist mimics the true Christ; the name “Jesus” in Greek has a numerical value of 888.  But someone encountering the text in some other language might look for an alternative explanation.  If one writes “Neron Caesar” in Hebrew consonants, their value adds up to 666.  If one drops the Hebrew letter nun, so as to correspond to a Latin form of Nero’s name, the name’s value thus decreases by 50, yielding the value of 616.

            This is a somewhat complicated theory.  But it might be how the reading “616” was created – via an interpretation that the Antichrist –  either literally or thematically or typologically or some other way – was expected to be the Emperor Nero.

Finally, a consideration of numerals in Greek New Testament manuscripts would be incomplete without a description of the Eusebian Canons and Sections.  Technically, the Eusebian Canons and Sections are part of the para-text, or meta-text – not part of the text itself.  They are a guide to cross-references in the Gospels. 

            At the beginning of many manuscripts of the Gospels, instead of jumping right into the text, and even before a chapter-list appears, there is a composition called “Ad Carpianus,” which is Eusebius’ brief explanation of how to use his cross-reference system for the Gospels.  In a few manuscripts this material is presented within a fairly unusual frame, shaped like a quatrefoil, or a symetrical rounded cross.  The Eusebian Canons and Ad Carpianus are included in the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation.

Eusebius began by mentioning that he got the idea for a cross-reference system for the Gospels from Ammonius the Alexandrian, who had arranged the text of the Gospel of Matthew with the parallel-passages from the other Gospels alongside it.  Eusebius wanted to keep each Gospel-account intact, and so instead of dividing up the texts of Mark, Luke, and John, he gave each pericopé its own number, and then made a ten-part chart, in which the parallel-passage were listed, by their numbers, side by side.  

            There are ten parts to this list:
            ● The first one contains the list of passages for which there are parallels in Matthew Mark, Luke, and John.

            ● The second one lists passages, or sections, for which there are parallels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

            ● The third one lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew, Luke, and John.

            ● The fourth lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew, Mark, and John.

            ● The fifth lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew and Luke.

            ● The sixth lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew and Mark.

            ● The seventh lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew and John.

            ● The eighth lists passages for which there are parallels in Mark and Luke.

            ● The ninth lists passages for which there are parallels in Luke and John.

            ● The tenth lists passages that do not have parallels, but which are unique in each Gospel.           

            The same numbers are written in the margin alongside each passage.  Accompanying these numbers, called the Section-numbers, is a Canon-number, written in red, which identifies the list, one through ten, in which the passage is found.  If you see a number from 1-10 in the margin written in red below the Section-number, you will know which list to consult to find the number of the passage. 

 

             So, if you open a Gospels-book to any passage, and want to see what the other Gospel-writers wrote about the same event, then after you find the Canon-number, written in red, you can consult that list, and see the numbers of the parallel-passages in the other Gospels.  Then by finding those numbers in the margins in those Gospels, you can read the parallel-passages themselves.  

 After this introductory guide, the Canon-Tables themselves occupy several pages.  These can be very plain, or in some cases spectacularly ornate, with complex colorful golden designs, and paintings of animals, birds, and other decorations in the margins.  In some cases the artistic effort that was given to the Eusebian Canons resulted in the theft of these pages, as works of ark.  The tradition of decorating the Eusebian Canons is abundantly shown not only in Greek manuscripts but also in Latin, Ethiopic, and, especially, Armenian manuscripts.

             Although Eusebius got the idea for a cross-reference system for the Gospels from the earlier writer Ammonius of Alexandria, he clearly did not closely follow Ammonius’ Matthew-centered system.  As John Burgon pointed out in 1871, in a detailed Appendix to his book about the last 12 verses of Mark, Canon 8 and Canon 9 cannot have been part of a Matthew-centered cross-reference system.  In addition, when it is noticed that Mark has 21 unique sections, Luke has 72 unique sections, John has 97 unique sections, and 24 sections are shared by Mark and Luke, and 21 sections are shared by Luke and John, this makes a total of 225 sections which have no parallel in Matthew and thus could not be part of a Matthew-centered cross-reference system.

The Eusebian Canons also have an impact on the testimony of Eusebius regarding the last 12 verses of Mark.  Eusebius is often quoted as if he said, in the composition Ad Marinum, that Mark 16:9-20 was absent from almost all manuscripts, but in real life, his statement is much more nuanced:  he wrote that that was one of several things that something that someone might say about the passage.  Eusebius himself instructed Marinus to retain the passage, and gave instructions about how Mark 16:9 was to be read, with a pause between “Rising” and “early on the first day of the week.”  And further along in the same composition, Eusebius quoted from Mark 16:9.  So, when he wrote Ad Marinum, Eusebius appears to favor the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20.

             But according to a note that appears in some members of the textual cluster known as family-1, Mark 16:9-20 is not included in the Eusebian Canons.  Specifically, in codices 1 and 1582, although Eusebian Section-numbers appear in the margin alongside verses 9-20, these two manuscripts, along with the manuscripts 205, 2886, and 209, have a prominent note before Mark 16:9, which states, “In some copies, the Gospel comes to a close here, and so do the Canons of Eusebius of Pamphilus.  But in many, this also appears.”

So it is possible that at some point after advising Marinus to keep Mark 16:9-20, Eusebius might have changed his mind, and decided not to include these verses in the text upon which he based the Eusebian Canons.

The Eusebian Canons occasionally have text-critical significance where they testify to the presence or absence of other specific passages.  For example, Luke 22:43-44 is not in Papyrus 75 or Codex Vaticanus or Codex Alexandrinus or Codex W, but in the 100s, Justin and Irenaeus both refer to the passage.  In the Eusebian Canons Luke 22:43-44 is included as Section #283, implying that it was in the text that was used by Eusebius.

            Mark 15:28 is not in Codex Vaticanus, or Sinaiticus, or Codex D, and is also missing in over 100 minuscules – but it is listed as Section #216 in the Eusebian Canons.

            And, by not featuring an entry for Matthew 27:49 and John 19:34 in Canon Nine, Eusebius shows that his text did not contain a parallel-passage between those two passages.  In Codex Vaticanus and in Codex Sinaiticus, Matthew 27:49 is expanded so as to create a parallel between those two verses; the Alexandrian Text of Matthew 27:49 says that before Jesus died, someone came and pierced Him in the side with a spear, and blood and water flowed from the wound. 

            By not including a reference to this reading in his cross-reference system, where it would have belonged in Canon 7, Eusebius shows that his manuscripts did not have this reading.  This is a very strong indication that Eusebius did not supervise the production of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.

Finally, although a little anecdote about a detail in the early Christian composition The Epistle of Barnabas is not directly related to the New Testament, it might illustrate the kind of figurative interpretations some early Christians could give to some numerals.   The Epistle of Barnabas was probably written in the early second century.  It appears in Codex Sinaiticus, after the book of Revelation. 

            In its ninth chapter, the author refers to Genesis 14:14, emphasizing the exact number of the men under Abraham’s command who went to rescue Lot, who had been captured by a foreign confederation:  three hundred and eighteen.  The number “eighteen” was written as the Greek letters Iota and Eta, the same letters at the beginning of the name “Jesus,” or “Iēsous.”  The remaining amount, 300, was written in Greek as the letter Tau, which looks like the beams of a cross.  And thus, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas implied, even in the days of Abraham, we have an abstract picture of how Jesus, on the cross, accomplished the deliverance of the captive.

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.”