In these troubled times, a lot of amateur prophets turn to the book of Revelation, either seriously or ironically, in search of answers to the pressing questions of the day. This can be fun; I do it too. But the problem is that many readers -- both serious and ironic -- don't actually know how to count.

Revelation 13:18 reads as follows:

This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

Depending on whether a given manuscript uses digits or spells numbers out in full, the Greek reads either

• In digits:    χξϚ = chi xi stigma.   In our numeration this is equivalent to 600 + 60 + 6. In both Greek and Hebrew, different letters of the alphabet have different numerical values, since those languages don't use numerals as such. Therefore the system of representing large numbers is not the simple base ten we're used to. The letter chi represents 600; it can't represent anything else.


• In words:    εξακοσιοι εξηκοντα εξ = hexakosioi hexekonta hex.     In English this is equivalent to six hundred sixty-six, or in the more old-fashioned rendering, six hundred, three-score and six.

If a writer of koine Greek wanted to string three digits together, he could easily have done that. The phrase εξ εξ εξ would read a bit awkwardly, but it would get the point across: six, six, six.

Note too that the word αριθμος (arithmos, "number" in "number of the beast") is singular, so the author of Revelation clearly intended to add his three digits together to create a sum. In other words, if he had wanted to say that the numbers of the beast are six hundred and sixty and six, then that would have been reflected in the grammar of the sentence, both in this verse and elsewhere. It doesn't. Early Christians did argue about the number of the beast, but even the ones who disagreed with what became the majority view never just strung sixes together.

This means that some of the most beloved theories of Satanic influence simply make no sense from a Biblical perspective. Even the most apocalyptically-minded Christian in the first century would have been completely baffled if you had tried to tell her that there was eschatological significance to the date June 6, 2006. Even if you were to explain our calendar to her -- sixth day, sixth month, sixth year of the millennium, get it? get it? -- she still wouldn't have thought to make religious significance out of it, no matter how eagerly she was looking forward to the second coming.

Now count six hundred days from some event, then sixty more, then six after that, and then you might be getting somewhere. But I realize that those are big numbers, and counting that high is really hard.

Another popular theory is that the World Wide Web is Satanic because the Hebrew letter ו, vav, is used to represent the number six (as the stigma does in Greek). In Hebrew, W-W-W would therefore be rendered vav-vav-vav, which can be computed as six-six-six. I don't think anyone would disagree that you can indeed make sixes out of vavs. But the relevance to Revelation is exactly nil -- or at least, no greater than any other number you might care to name. It would make just as much sense to freak out about buying a house whose address is 222, just because 666 is evenly divisible by it.

Some particularly silly theories are predicated upon modern forms of numerals that would have made no sense to the authors of the Bible: here is a web site that declares 1999 to be a Satanic year because 999 is 666 upside-down. (Wouldn't the inverted number be the sort of pointless 6661? And wouldn't the inversion mean that it's a good number?) A lot of jokes, a few of which have even been propagated right here on e2, get their punchlines from numbers like $6.66, 66.6 MHz, and so on. Again, I'm certainly up for apocalyptic humour, but I prefer to do it with the number given us by John of Patmos. I think John would have gotten the famous Neighbour of the Beast joke, though!

As you've no doubt gathered, I enjoy fooling around with gematria just as much as the next religion-obsessed freak. But if you want to impress me playing that game, you gotta do it right. I don't care whether or not you believe the Bible is true; in either case, if you want to dabble in Biblical prophecy, you have to do it on the Bible's own terms.