Doc, I found this link for you, hope you like it.
www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/%7Eelf/abacus/history.htmlPebbles were used to vote in Athens in the classic age, let's say around 450 BC, John wrote Rev. around the end of 1st century AD...
Anyway I don't think we must focus a lot on the difference between count and calculate (in the end I think that is the matter) as one could have been used to mean the other (in a rhetorical figure).
But let me tell you this:
(A=1) plus (A=1) plus (A=1)= 2 is counting
as is counting
George=6; walker=6 etc.
(Just a note:I mentioned Bush but was joking (btw I think he's a puppet) )
Vice versa
Robert = 100+70 (let's use omicron) + 2 + 8 (using eta) + 100 + 300 = 580
is calculating, ok with gematria, but is calculating as I have to multiply the letters for their values and then add them.
I'm not saying that gematria is the key,I just don't exclude it.
I prefer to consider every option we have.
The real problem is: we are speaking of a man that had one or more visions of the future...
How could a man of the 1st century transmit to the people of his time the notion, for example, of "aircraft carrier" (to give an example of something we know while he cannot recognize)?
He had to adapt the things he saw to something he could describe and that could be understood by the others.
How course here we have the same problem we had with count/calculate.
The can all be metaphors, I agree, but why exclude this second hypothesis?
Let me make an example:
The Noah's ark.
Let's put that it happened but not in the way we know from the bible.
Let's say that some members of an ancient civilization, knowing that something was going to happen to the earth (glaciation?) decided to hibernate themselves in an hi-tech structure keeping
with them the DNA of all the animals to repopulate the planet (I just invented this plot, hope u like it..
)
How do u think, thousand years later, people of the bronze age could hand down this story? A big boat with all the animals on was for sure an easier way because the scope of a simple story is double:
- can be changed but not in the substance
- if handed down will reach a lot of future generations
The great thing in this is that the people that has enough knowledge (as also Rev. says) can have an idea of the real events, people of the previous age have a great story to tell and to keep as it is (for example by putting it in an "holy" book that cannot be changed
)
So who invented the Noah's ark story (in my example) made one of the greatest discoveries: he/they found a way to communicate with people that had to born thousands years later.
If you want to know more about this, I
pray to read
"Hamlet's Mill"
written by Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend
it is not easy to read but it's revealing!
Every point you made was right on target, applicable, accurate, expository, valid. I especially love the truth of how old writers had an eye on the future understand of their work by creating clear analogues, sylogisms, whatever, to make "historical transpostions" of their ideas into the obscure future.
I am seeing your way---there MUST be elemnt(s) of Gematria involved in this verse, and now I see it true, even recommended BY peculiarities in the verse itself.
In short, I found 5 other places in the New Testament last night where a number total is mentioned. According to Strong's, in every other case besides the one we are studying here, whenever a number total is mentioned, it is express in full out formal Greek, like we do in English: see below:
"hekaton pentekonta treis" is expressed for "153" in the last chapter of Luke, not a ammalgam of letters or a ligature, such as in XEç.
What I see now, is that each letter in "XEç" represents a number value.
X=600, E = 60, and ç = 6.
So, that is an indirect clue. The clue ITSELF uses the trick of providing "a letter to equal a numerical value". That IS gematria, on the whole. At least, it implies the potential application of it.
Therefore, my instinct says that the SOLUTION must be have a parallel element.Here is my thinking:
Much like a crossword puzzle in English. If you see a clue that is abbreviated, then the solution will ALSO be abbreviated. Kind = kind, style = style.
Parabolic presentation.
ALSO: And as Christ said in two places in the NT (confirmation by the double witness of two passages) that "There is nothing that I teach them NOT using parables (parabole in Greek; the technique of presenting a metaphoric text in the place of a true one, which has sufficiently parallel intent as to have a certain equality with it, ------my paraphrase.)
So, the clue is delivered to us in the text via gematria.
From my search, and from a commentary or two, I see that this happens one time only in the NT. Revelation 13:18. That verse is the only case of it. The rest of the cases, numbers are expressed in formal words.
There survives, in the Vatican, a copy of most of a septuagint from 390 A.D., I think it is. The "XEç" is used in the photograph I have seen of it.
(I know using capital "E" is a bit wrong. "Zhi" looks more like a cursive "E" in Greek.)
But one little thing I notice, is this:
The alphabetic positions that those 3 letters occupied at that time, in Greek, were the 22nd, the 14th, and the 6th letter (now obsolete).
IF THAT VERSE IS THE MODEL FOR HOW WE PERFORM THE CALCULATION, then by that, position plays a part of the solution.
By that, then, it would be {22+14+6= 42.}
The writer of Revelations wrote in Greek, knew Greek, he did not anticipate English, or how we would count, or reckon numbers, or that Arabic systems would come to be the main way to reckon.
Integers presented in Arabic style has no precedent in the Greek of that day.
I also recall the idea of place holders in Arabic systems:
100.
The one is a single unit, occupying the "hundreds column".
But with XEç, there are no columns. X still = 100, even if you present it
as a single letter.
With our system as it is, we must emply PLACE HOLDERS, or COLUMNS OF DENOMINATION, in order to perfrom the Gematria.
One hundred is 1 followed by 0 and 0.
But in Greek, 100 = X followed by nothing.
The numbers stand alone for theire value, regarless of what order they come in.
çEX would, though backwards, STILL equal 666 because the numbers are additive but not positional.
The succession of gematric numbers to derive the total is made meaningless, as far as the way everyone is doing it to this verse!
How do we do this today? We take letters, of people's names perhaps, and establish the values, then add them up for a total.
BOB = 2 + 15 + 2 = 19. 15 + 2 + 2 = 19.
So the man's name might be OBB? or BBO?
Therefore, the order of the letters of the man's name doesn't matter.......
What how can we not consider the letter order? Otherwise, we have a multitude of illogical letter combinations?
Then Rev 13:18 makes simply too vague a propostion to ever have an answer.
And what about this:
OSAMA BIN LADEN? or is it USAMA BEN LADIN? Or is it a sequential blur of Arabic letters that my computer is not formatted to create for you here?
Also, logic says: In arabic his total will be one thing, in English yet another.
So, maybe he is a 664 to us here, and 117 in his home.
Which language counts for the right language? Which dialect? Which tribal
spelling idiosyncracy?
How do we EVER put all the issues to rest if we interpret Rev 13:18 the traditional way?
And what about this: is A =1, B =2----or is A=1 and B = 6 and c = 12?
Is each successive number increased by the same amount? Does each number grow geometrically, by muliplication?
Or, should they increase by fibinocci numbers? Or a cycle or squares or cubes?
The portent of this is that a roomfull of mathematicians and a warehouse full of computers will produce an impractical number of ways to create the solution to this enigma.This bible verse has really, by its relative economy and durth of explicit clues, done more to promote ENDLESS computations and a never ending indulgence in numerical manipulation than a IRS tax agent ever could. Although they are making headway.
This verse has this legacy: 2000 years of trying every known mathematic algorhythm to plumb it's depths. And NO definite answer yet. (Perhaps the answer really is sealed until a certain time.)
You are right, ilras,--the age of the "pebble"-counting, as a literal bit of "calc"ium ended long before Christ----but, parabolically, it led into the abacus, the Texas Instruments "calc"ulator, and ultimately, the modern computer.
We dont use pebbles anymore, we use bytes. We don't store the tabulation in a earthen vessel, anymore; we store it as etchings written to a disk, i.e. RAM on a computer chip inside a CPU shell (which, ultimately comes from materials mined in the earth).
What changes? Mankind never "changes", we merely refine.
But the verse again:
It says: "It is the number of man", not, "It is the number of his name."
It doesn;t directly equate number with name. The indirect inference is where I think everybody has gone off.
Actually, I found this out also. There is no direct or indirect article in the original Greek text, or septuagint. Greek actually requires one for us to put it in our English translation. It says literally:
"It is the number of man." THERE IS NO "A", no indirect article.
NOT the number of "A" man. Just the "number of man."
Another problem:
Would St. John have us perform gematria on every human being living in our day? Or would we be left responsible to choose a long list of candidates, based on how "evil and infernal" they seem---to US!
Every country would pick different candidates!!!!
It never even says to RELATE the number that he has to the name that he has.
I conclude, because of this, that you can find the answer WITHOUT knowing anyone's name at all!
It does not say to find a name!
Everyone is trying to deduce his name!
Read the riddle again.
Where does it ask us to guess a name?
The goal of the riddle is to "compute the number of the beast."
It asks us to work with numbers. The instruction it to compute something.
It does not even make us derive what the number is! It tells us what it is!
We already know that it is 666.
Why does it do this? "Figure this out, but here is the answer."? Huh?
So, it must be the figuring out itself that is important. The operation is the issue, not a number, not a name.
And, you are right, we are to use some kind of letter/number gematria to do this.
But we have no letters to work with, save the letters in the answer!
We do not have the letters involved in beginning the computation itself.
So, for that reason, everyone assumes that the letters, by default, MUST come from the letters of his name. After all, we gotta have some numbers come from SOMEWHERE or we can't even start!
What is the Greek deal about spelling and letters? And writing them down? After all, it must be the WRITTEN form of the name, right? That would be (Gk.) "graphos" of his "onoma". "Graphos" means to write, using letter symbols to compose text.
"Graphos" does NOT appear in these related verses. Nothing about writing, letters, spelling, letter order.
We already know that we are NOT talking about the way his name sounds.
It isn't the SOUND of his name in any language that our attention is being called to.
Is it the orthography, the exact spelling? There are 11 spellings of my last name since 1000 A.D., and several variants are still in use today in my own country! And it has changed spelling twice since we got here!
Using "orthographic" means (see the root word "graphos" there) to solve this is impossible. It presents to many exceptions and difficulties. We can't get started, we don't know how to work the mathematical process, and we don't know how to vector the math process into a concise answer that is equivalent to whatever it is we conclude about XEç.
So, we have to make up the rules!
I pick my favorite fiends in the world, spell their name in the English we find in the USA today (Ronald McPaper), use a 1-26 assignment, or maybe ASCII, or squares, or maybe some algebraicly derived integers found with the quadrilateral equation, scribble out the values, add them up on my desk-top calculator, and compare the total to 666. What if somebody gets 333? Are they HALF of an anti-christ? If someone gets 1332, are they anti-christ's DOUBLE?! Or would that be 121212? There aren't enough specified rules, and a stunning lack of a way to establish a system in our modern world, using our symbols and values of language, to ever claim that we have the right answer!
The answer must be simpler.
While MILLIONS follow the pied piper's call to start free-form number crunching in great spasms and hysterium, it leaves a few ignored questions looming out for all to see but no one to notice. Because they are all adding and subtracting and relating it to personalities (with names) that they hate.
I mean, a REAL christian can make a good, potenital 666 list, can't he? Any politician or star or rich man or public figure that he finds offensive, goes on thelist. Usually sexual issues and power issues and how high ranking they are.
Jerry Falwell insists he has to be from a Jewish background. Why? Where does this chapter ever imply this idea?
Others say he has to be Arabic, or Syrian, or Russian, or Prince Charles, or Nixon, or Kissinger, or, and for crying out loud, named Damian.
And, even though "anthropos" can be either a man OR a woman ("aner" would be a man, "neos" would be a youth), the insist he is a man!
He's a man cause the bible sayz so raht ther! It says so! And ah bah-leeave it. It is a MAN A MAN A MAN! Not a woman a woman a woman.
Well, the exact Greek wording leaves that open.
An anthropos can be any human, of any age or sex, race, or nationality.
Creed, religion, or political party!
That's why "King James Only" people make me get just a little........tense.
There is a distinct passage in the book of Daniel that indicates that a particular man WILL arise at a certain time, who will have a certain bearing, who will be no respector of the "love of women", etc. et all. But even he has foreign relations with other countries, makes war, and signs treaties. If there was only one ruler, and one government, what would be the point?
THe nations as they are, in distinct form of tribes, persons, and families, are going to continue just the same as they always have. There may come a over-arching hegemony that becomes more or less worldwide, yes.
I am ranting, sorry.
Back to my first point: you are right, though, ilras, I see it.
Although I disagree about the parsing of names in this, there is every indication that some type of letter/numeric substitution is to be used in working out the problem, and gematria is implicit.
Actually, I found another proof last night. The invocation "here is wisdom", "here is Sophia", has linkage to the ancient practice of Gematria as well. I lost the link. Maybe I can find it again.
Gematria is certainly something that St. John would have known about. And the Judaic tradtions contain much work of that nature, as well.
ALso, I found 3 places where Christ starts a parable, "A certain man was...." and on and on. In each case there was the Greek word for particular, or unique, followed in one case by "aner"(man) and in two cases by Anthropos (man-faced).
As yet I fail to understand the distinction, i.e., why one is used over the other in various cases.
But the lack of the word "certain" is interesting to me. Why use it with Anthropos? Why NOT use it in Rev 13:18? If itis ONE certain man that is 666, why not use that word in the verse, the word for "certain"?
I will find that word.
I am exausted from diddling over this...........if I am this tired, oh the (eis) poor man (anthropos) who reads what I (graphe) wrote here (hode)!
My poor psuche (soul)! It's all Helenoi (Greek) to me.