Greetings Doves,

     The age of enlightenment saw the meteoric rise of mathematics and science. It went almost "unnoticed" the segregation of numbers from letters. Hebrew, Greek and Roman were among some of the languages where letters also represented numbers.  The ability to "weigh" or "value" letters, the alpha-numeric equivalence, is called Gematria in Hebrew.

     It has sometimes been assumed that the 666 of Revelation must ultimately lead back to a Hebrew name/title which would sum to 666.

       There are a few minority texts where the 666 is rendered 616. It seems to suggest that the redactor was anticipating Latin as the dominant lingua franca, and that in Latin the ID of the beast would sum to 616 in Latin. It therefore seems the 666 is associated with the Greek, the text language of the Book of Rev.

     It's too bad we don't have the Revelator's original vorlage. It would be interesting to take every 600 + 60 + 6 or 666th letters in the text to see what is revealed. "Here is wisdom,,,,". What if the word "Here" refers to the text itself, thus making the admonition not to add or subtract very poignant indeed!

      BaShem Yeshua Sarenu Shalom     TEFE