Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: 666's and Beasties everywhere. Message-ID: Date: 23 May 91 01:29:22 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 39 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu rich@mont.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel) writes: >I heard an interesting interpretation of 666 recently. The theory is that >it was originally written down as VI VI VI and was subsequently misinterpreted >as the roman numeral representation for the number 666. The more sensible >interpretation becomes evident with knowledge of the motto of the roman >empire (not sure if this is spelled right): vini vidi vichi (I came, I saw, >I conquered) abbreviated in those days as VI VI VI. So the mark of the >beast would be a reference to militarism or military conquest of some kind. >Makes lots of sense to me .. what's scarey is when you consider which is the >biggest military power on earth today, and which is capable of bringing on >a world-wide catastrophe. > >Rich Rich, First a general note: A primary problem with all of these attempts to find a latin-based solution as to what "666" means is that there is no evidence that latin had anything to do with the source of the book of Revelations. All the copies we have are in greek. Moreover, if it _were_ originally written in another language that language would almost certainly have been aramaic (or, just possibly, hebrew) as there is a good deal of evidence that Revelation was a re-worked Jewish apocalyptic work. wrt this particular solution: While I have a lot of sympathy for the general tone of this interpretation, there are a number of obvious problems: first the spelling (and so the abbreviation) is incorrect; i.e. "vEni, ...". Second, it is simply a quote from the writings of Julius Caesar and is no more the "motto of the Roman Empire" than "four score and seven years ago" is the motto of the United States. In addition, the number is not given as "six six six" but as "six-hundred sixty six". (Btw, "666" _does_ have the interesting property that its representation in roman numeral --"DCLXVI"-- spells out all the characters in descending order.)