Margaret Barker Comments About Revelation 13:18 (666/616)

Taken from Barker's Revelation of Jesus Christ, pages 233-235. My posting these remarks do not constitute an endorsement of Margaret Barker's position:

Most references to the beast refer only to his mark (14.9; 16.2; 19.20, 20.4), but the introduction of his 'number' is another device to indicate Nero. The name of the beast and 666, the number of its name (13.17), refer to the way that letters were also used as numbers; the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet was used for 1, the third for 3 and so on. Treated thus, a process known as gematria, the Greek name 'Neron Caesar', spelled in Hebrew letters, becomes N (50) + R (200) + W (6) + N (50) + Q (100) + S (60) + R (200), making 666. This spelling of the name is confirmed by an Aramaic document found at Murabba'at, dated 'the second year of the Emperor Nero'. This implies an interpretation of the name by people who understood Hebrew or Aramaic, even though Revelation is now written in Greek. The identification of the beast as Nero has been a commonplace among scholars since it was first suggested a century ago, long before the Murabba'at document confirmed the contemporary spelling of the name Nero. The problem is that this form of gematria is only known elsewhere using Greek letters, not Hebrew. At the end of the second century CE, however, there were some versions of Revelation which had the number of the beast as 616, a further challenge to scholars' ingenuity (Irenaeus, AH 5.30). It could represent the Latin form 'Nero Caesar', the final 'N' of the Greek form being dropped and thus the gematria number being reduced by 50 to 616. Or it could be conventional gematria with the Greek letters of the name 'Gaios Kaisar', and the beast could be Caligula. By the time of Irenaeus, the end of the second century CE, the identification of the beast as Nero was not known (AH 5.28-30), but the fear of Nero had passed into Christian tradition, and there can be no doubt that Nero's evil reign was written into the final interpretation of the beast in the Book of Revelation. The Ascension of Isaiah, whose Christian version was completed towards the end of the first century CE, 'foresees' the reign of Nero:

Beliar will descend, the great angel, the king of this world ... He will descend from his firmament in the form of a man, a king of iniquity,* the murderer of his mother** and he will persecute the plant which the twelve apostles of the Beloved have planted ... By his word he will cause the sun to rise by night, and the moon also he will make to appear at the sixth hour. And he will do everything he wishes in the world; he will act and speak like the Beloved and he will say, 'I am the LORD and before me there was no one' ... And all men in the world will believe in him. They will sacrifice to him and will serve him saying, 'This is the LORD and besides him there is no other' ... And the power of his miracles will be in every city and district and he will set up his image before him in every city. (Asc. Isa. 4.1-12)

The beast, however, had taken many forms before it was identified as Nero. The evil reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-163 BCE) was also a time of the beast, as can be seen from Daniel 7.19-27 which explained that the time of the fourth and last beast had come. When a false rumour arose that Antiochus was dead, civil strife broke out in Judea and Antiochus returned to quell the trouble in Jerusalem (2 Macc. 5). A great slaughter followed, with 40,000 killed and a similar number sold as slaves. He robbed the temple and defiled the sanctuary by entering it and then setting up a pagan altar. Many Jews adopted his pagan ways and sacrificed to idols (1 Macc. 1). The Book of Daniel addressed this situation and interpreted the ancient vision of the Man ascending to heaven as a sign of hope for those troubled times (Dan. 7). There would be an abomination set in the temple, but the saints would triumph. Much of what is said about the beast in Revelation could have been said of Antiochus. Had these fragments of Revelation been discovered for the first time, abandoned in a cave, it would have been easy for scholars to argue for a date in the second century BCE. The beast had the blasphemous name 'Epiphanes', which means 'The Manifest God'; there had been a rumour of his death but he returned to wreak havoc in Jerusalem just as the beast returned 'from the bottomless pit' to wreak havoc in Jerusalem (11.7-8); he blasphemed God's Name and his dwelling, the temple (13.6), and he both took captives and slew with the sword (13.10)

There is more, but see Barker.