Fun with 666

In his revelation, John says that the number 666 is a key to the identification of the Terrible Beast that dominates much of the vision. The usual approach is to identify a political leader whose name adds up to 666.

In Greek and Hebrew each letter of the alphabet doubles as a number. Gematria is the practice of calculating the numeric equivalent of words and phrases by adding up the numbers associated with each letter. Technically, Gematria refers to calculation in Hebrew while Isopsephy is the Greek equivalent.

The English alphabet doesn't normally carry numeric values but this practice has been carried into English using numbering systems similar to the ancient languages. This has become known as English Gematria. When I was a child, we sometimes wrote messages in code by using numbers instead of letters.

Many political leaders have been suggested by interpreters of Revelation. Early scholars attempted to identify the number 666 with Nero, but for various reasons, this did not work. In more recent times, people tried to link the number to Hitler and Stalin, but all these attempts have eventually failed.

The usual approach is to identify a dangerous political leader and check if his name adds up to 666. However, checking thousands of potential names is rather tiresome, so I decided to work the other way around by looking at the Greek alphabet and determining what sets of characters would add up to 666. I was surprised by how few options there are.

The difference in scale of the three components of 666 (600, 60, and 6) means that each one has to be made up of a different set of Greek characters. This also means that the characters for six, sixty or six hundred and above cannot be used. These are shaded in blue in the table.

Only three combinations of numbers add up to six. These are
    α,ε       1+5 =6
    β,δ       2+4 =6
    α,β,γ     1+2+3 = 6

Three combinations of numbers add up to 60
    μ,κ       20+40 =6
    ι,ν       10+50 =60
    ι,κ,λ     10+20+30 = 60

Three combinations of numbers add up to 600.
    υ,σ       200+400
    ρ,ϕ       100+500
    ρ,σ,τ     100+200+300 = 600

There are a few other combinations that will work, but they need a lot more letters, which indicates a very large and complex name.

The result surprised me. The easiest way to get 600 is with the letters υ,σ. These add up to 600 and their English equivalent is “US”. Wow.

My first options for 6 and 60 were α,ε and μ,κ. The English equivalent of these letters is AMEK. That rung a bell, but needs an R to be clear. Surprisingly, the third option for 600 has is ρ ,σ ,τ. When I took the ρ to get AMERK. I was left with σ,τ, which in English is ST, an abbreviation for “States”.

I am not sure it is legitimate to use vowels a and e twice, but doing so gives α μ ε ρ ε κ α     σ τ. The English equivalent is AMEREKA ST.

I guess you can say that John should have been more accurate than that, but it is not bad.

This result might be significant, or might just indicate that you can get what ever result you want if you put in a little effort.