Decoding "the number of the beast"
People all over the world, at all times, have attached great importance to numbers. They were considered the embodiment of the cosmic order, a reflection of Divine wisdom. Some numbers - three, seven, nine - were considered sacred and, accordingly, lucky; others (for example, the infamous "Devil's Dozen" - 13) - unhappy, associated with evil spirits. But, perhaps, the number 666, the “number of the beast”, was the most unlucky.
The first mention of "the number of the beast" can be found in the "Revelation of John the Evangelist" - perhaps the only prophecy officially recognized by the Christian church. John described in detail the appearance of a beast, more powerful than all the demons of hell: "And I stood on the sand of the sea, and saw a beast coming out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns: on its horns there were ten diadems, and on its heads are blasphemous names." (Apocalypse, chapter 13). This animal will have the body of a leopard, bear claws and lion's fangs. He will rule the Earth for three and a half years, and before that the Antichrist will join him, who will force many to bow to the beast. After the time of the great battle at Armageddon comes, the devil's power will be defeated, and Satan, together with the Antichrist, will be imprisoned for a thousand years, and the kingdom of Christ will be established on Earth …
About the mysterious “number of the beast” in “Revelation” it is said as if in passing: “Here is wisdom. He who has intelligence, count the number of the beast, for it is a human number; his number is six hundred and sixty-six. " This little phrase has given rise to many interpretations. The simplest, which caused the most panic, can be called "calendar". Every time the ominous three sixes appeared on the calendar, especially impressionable people began to expect the appearance of the predicted beast. But neither in 666 nor in 1666 did anything like this happen … Another wave swept the world on June 6, 2006. Expectant mothers were terrified of giving birth on this day (especially after watching the film "The Omen"), many believers closed in their homes and prayed, and mystics furtively glanced at the sky …
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, was even forced to make an official statement to the media, in which he warned Christians against superstition: “Unlike a pagan who is afraid of everything, including eclipses, numbers and accepts, a Christian should not be afraid nothing and no one but God … When the last times come, it depends not on the coincidence of numbers, but on how far people will shy away from evil and fulfill the commandments of God."
The "calendar" decoding of the "number of the beast" can hardly be considered correct, because the text of the "Apocalypse" is deeply symbolic. In addition, there are direct "clues" in it, as, for example, the words of one of the angels: "The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will come out of the abyss and go to destruction … And seven kings, of which five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet arrived, and when it comes, it will not be long. " So John the Theologian speaks of wisdom for a reason - most likely, it is a hint, a clue, accessible only to those who "have a mind."
Over the centuries, many attempts have been made to decipher the "number of the beast" - that is, to find out its name. One of the most common methods was kabbalistic. It consisted in the fact that in the time of John the Evangelist, numbers were often replaced by letters of the alphabet. Thus, the sum of the letters of the name of the beast should have been 666. But there can be several such combinations, how can you choose from them the one that the prophet had in mind?
To decipher the "number of the beast" it is important to compare the words of "Revelation" with real events in history. The fact is that in the early Christian tradition the emperors of Rome were called "beasts". Even Friedrich Engels, in his work "On the History of Primary Christianity", made an attempt to determine the time of writing of the "Apocalypse" and calculated: the first "beast" was Augustus, the second was Tiberius, the third was Caligula, the fourth was Claudius, the fifth was Nero, the sixth was Galba, and seventh - Otho. Otho reigned for only three months … Engels made a completely logical conclusion: John the Theologian wrote the "Apocalypse" during the reign of Galba, that is, from June 9, 68 to January 15, 69 AD. e.
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The German orientalist Ferdinand Benari proposed the following hypothesis: the number 666 hides the name of the Roman emperor Nero - the very beast that "was and is not." The fact is that on Roman coins that were minted for the eastern part of the Roman Empire, inscriptions were made in Hebrew. At the same time, the vowels were omitted, and instead of "Nero Caesar" the inscription read "Nron Ksr". If we add up the numerical value of these letters, we get just 666. But for what reason was Nero declared “the beast”?
If we look at the historical documents, it becomes clear that the hatred of Christians towards Nero was based on many reasons. The ancient Roman writer-historian Eyes Suetonius Tranquill left a biography of Nero. He was an extremely unbalanced, cruel and immoral person. According to Suetonius, Nero executed Antonia, the daughter of Claudius, who after the death of Poppea refused to marry him, killed his mother and stepson. He forced his teacher Seneca to commit suicide, although he repeatedly vowed not to harm him. When a tailed comet appeared in the sky, he learned from the astrologer Balbill that it portends the death of the supreme rulers. The Roman emperor was seriously alarmed, but the astrologer told him that this disaster could be paid off with a brilliant execution. And Nero condemned to death all the noble men of the state - the excuse was the disclosure of two conspiracies at once …
If the Roman emperor treated all his subjects with incredible cruelty, then with regard to Christians he invented truly devilish mockery. Most of all, Nero liked to watch how Christians were thrown into a cage with predatory animals, and they tore them apart. Soon, during the conspiracy, Nero ordered one of his entourage to kill himself, the Christians sighed calmly. But not for long. Servius Sulpicius Galba, who replaced Nero, turned out to be a weak ruler. He could not bring order to the empire. In remote provinces, feuds broke out. It is not surprising that in these conditions there was a man who declared himself Nero, who was allegedly only wounded during the coup and fled to the east.
Christians were horrified by these rumors. Still: one of the most terrible enemies has risen from the dead. They attributed the resurrection of Nero to Satan himself and in horror awaited the end of the world. The Christian faith had not yet matured in those days. In Roman cities, there were closed communities leading a semi-legal existence. If at the moment of the appearance of the false Nero their members renounced their faith, this would mean the collapse of Christianity. Therefore, the pastors took measures to strengthen the will of their charges. It was during these difficult times that various "revelations" appeared.
All of them were devoted to one theme: soon the end of the world and the day of judgment will come, after which all enemies of Christianity will be destroyed, and Christians themselves will gain eternal life. All the authors of the "revelations" (later the Church canonized only one thing - the "Apocalypse" that came down to us) used similar symbols: seven kings, 42 months of the power of the beast, the number of antichrist. And all of them, including John the Theologian, spoke of the end of the world as something inevitable and very close in time. But the end of the world did not follow, and the name of Nero was eventually forgotten.
It would seem that the Church should have consigned the "Apocalypse" to oblivion - as an unfulfilled prophecy. But the Christian shepherds were wise people. Therefore, they left the doctrine of the end of the world and the coming Last Judgment. Over time, the generally accepted interpretation of the number 666 was forgotten, and they began to “try on” it on the next tyrants who could be found in every era. For example, at the time of Peter I, the Old Believers considered him the Antichrist. First, it was the "eighth king" - as predicted in "Revelation." Secondly, his reforms affected the interests of the Orthodox Church. Still: he took the land from the monks, abolished the post in the army, and he introduced absolutely foreign customs at the court - assemblies, smoking tobacco, unusual clothes …
The next "Antichrist", according to the calculations of the same monks, was Napoleon. Through many permutations and combinations, it was possible to fit his name under the famous "666". Later, Hitler, Stalin, Bill Gates were called "the beast" … And according to one of the versions, the "beast" was not a man, but a whole state - the now collapsed Soviet Union. The argument was very simple: cut off the last letter "P" - it simply means a country - and read the name as "CCC country". And now we take the old Slavonic edition of "Revelation" and see that the number of the beast often looks like SSS. The fact is that this is how the eighth letter of the alphabet was written - "zelo", which meant the number six. Perhaps this is the strangest of the versions about the "number of the beast" - after all, the "Revelation" was written not only and not so much for Russia, and such a coincidence in other languages is not confirmed.
According to biblical symbolism, six is a human number. First of all, man was created on the sixth day. But this is not the main thing: if 7 is closely connected with God and the upper world, then the six symbolizes human perfection (which is an order of magnitude lower than the divine), wealth and power. In the East, there are whole queues for documents with a six - it is considered a real talisman that brings happiness to the owner. But what have not been discovered in the number 666 (or in connection with its use) by researchers from different countries of the world!
They tried to declare the world wide web - the Internet (on the grounds that www, when translated into Hebrew and the corresponding counting equals 666) and dollar bills (they have a width of 66.6 mm), were trying to declare a beast! And in 1997, the Greek computer scientist Thomas Psaras reported that barcodes use three secret double strokes, which are simply separators for the computer, but by chance they denote the number 6. Thomas, apparently, was a fan of the "Apocalypse", and concluded: the code on goods and documents is nothing more than the seal of Satan. As proof, he cites words from the same prophecy: those who do not have the seal of Satan can neither buy nor sell. Of course, the journalists immediately picked up a new sensation.
From the point of view of the numerical symbolism of the Pythagoreans, this is the so-called triangular number. It expresses the sum of consecutive digits from 1 to 36. The sixes that make it up are no less unusual. The number six is the first of the so-called perfect numbers, the sum of the divisors of which (including the one and excluding the number itself) is equal to the number itself: 6 = 1 + 2 + 3. And here is another interesting fact from the world of numbers: 666 is the sum of the squares of the first seven prime numbers. If we consider the number of an animal in the framework of the theory of stability of binary systems, as was done by the candidate of technical sciences Andrey Osipov, then we get a rather curious picture. The fact is that binary systems are stable in the range from one third to two thirds (in decimal form - from 33.3% to 66.6%). So if the number of people seduced by the beast reaches 66.6%, humanity as a system will begin to collapse …
The number 666 has a strange effect on a person. Christians do their best to avoid it, which gives rise to many curiosities. In some cities of the world, the 66th floor is missing in skyscrapers, that is, after the 65th, the 67th immediately follows. And on the map of America you will not find road 666 - as you can see, the Americans decided not to risk it. Moscow Orthodox Christians in the ornament on the new Russian passport saw three sixes. They came to receive new documents only after consulting a priest.
2003 - before the elections to the Russian parliament in the Tambov region, it was decided not to do polling station No. 666 in connection with numerous appeals of believers.
2002 - the trial, which took place in the city of Priozersk, Leningrad region, became a sensation. and later called "judgment against the devil." The City Court officially recognized that the barcode of each taxpayer identification number (TIN) contains three sixes …
Despite the fact that the number of interpretations 666 has exceeded a hundred, new hypotheses are being put forward all the time. Increasingly, they no longer concern specific historical figures, but abstractions. For example, the rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Toronto, Oleg Molenko, believes: “The number 666 itself does not mean anything, except for the actual number … But, I think, the name of the beast is not accidentally expressed by three sixes. God created the universe for six days, and on the seventh day rested from His works. From here, people have a 7-day week. Apart from the day of rest, there remains work, work, work. In this sense, the number six means deprivation of peace. And in triple form - deprivation of eternal peace."
The story of the "number of the beast" and the superstitions associated with it is a classic example of the influence of myths on human consciousness. The number 666 is indeed a human number. Its dark symbolism was invented by people. But, as often happens, the symbol got out of the control of its creators. And now thousands of people, consciously or unconsciously, shy away from the number, which is considered devilish. And hundreds are trying to figure out the name of the beast and calculate the date of the end of the world.