So that "Omen" kid was just an annoying little turd, and not the Antichrist? (Although there's no essential reason he couldn't be both, I suppose.)

The Beast is from Grand Rapids, Michigan?

This is gonna be great. Back in high school, because I didn't go to church and I believed in evolution and played D&D and listened to Blue Oyster Cult, I was regarded as suspicious by many of my classmates.

So when they found my phone number ended in 7666, that clinched it.

My 20-year reunion's coming up, so if this pans out, I'm gonna spend the whole evening yelling "suck it, bitches!"

(if that's a TOS violation, my apologies)

It would suck for people born on June 16th.

That's ok, if i remeber correctly 616 transcribes to indicate Caligula as the beast, whereas 666 indicated Nero. Neither one liked Christians so it makes sense.

So everyone can party next year on June 1 instead of June 6th. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.

HP

" "suck it, bitches!" . . . if that's a TOS violation, my apologies

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

oh, man, that's funny.

New to ace's, huh, mate?

Now they are going to have to change all of the preprinted National ID cards.

This isn't really new. Iraneus, a Church father from the Second Century, wrote about the 666 / 616 difference in the second century in Chapter XXX of Against Heresies.

Maybe it was just a scribe with crappy handwriting?

There's a little town down here where I live that had their phone exchange prefix changed to "666" back in the 1980s.

You can imagine just how apeshit everyone there was over the change.

I, for one, am not pleased with this development.

It puts my birthmark in a wholly different light. And NOT a positive one.

Shit.

Cheers,
Daves at Garfield Ridge

Crap.

I wonder if Iron Maiden will re-issue "Number of the Beast"?

Is Vincent Price still alive?

So is the "burgeoning theocracy" I keep being warned about these Christian evangelicals, or the Church of Satan? Cause if it's the latter, boy, won't the editorial board of the New York Times be surprised.

Headline: "We Did Not See That Coming"

Alex, you forgot the subtitle:

But apart from that, the story was accurate

Red M&M, green M&M, you all come out the same in the end...

"This isn't really new. Iraneus, a Church father from the Second Century, wrote about the 666 / 616 difference in the second century in Chapter XXX of Against Heresies."

The actual line from revelations says "If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666*". So 666 is actually man's number. Also, some versions of the bible actually have a footnote from that line that says "*616 on some manuscripts". The discovery of these new texts may have simply changed the balance so that more than 1/2 of the "original" manuscripts now say 616, and less than half say 666.

Just how did Peter Gilmore become High Priest of the Church of Satan? Like, did he have the gnarliest sacrifice? Um, and the name Peter Gilmore doesn't do much for me in the 'striking fear into the hearts of Christians' thing. Now Peter Filleter or Peter Peter Christian Eater . . . nah, still doesn't get it.

Emily,

Noted theologian, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, interpreted the passage differently:

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number. Its number is six hundred and sixty six.

Who ya gonna believe--this guy Iraneus or the bad mo-fos who wrote Aces High?

The actual line from revelations says "If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666*". So 666 is actually man's number. Also, some versions of the bible actually have a footnote from that line that says "*616 on some manuscripts". The discovery of these new texts may have simply changed the balance so that more than 1/2 of the "original" manuscripts now say 616, and less than half say 666.

Far more than half of the extant ancient manuscripts use 666. The difference between 666 and 616 might be as simple as a scribal error (as Irenaeus suggested) or the difference between the numeric value of Hebrew transliterations of Greek and Latin versions of Nero Caesar.

In any case, the bar code tattooed on my scalp reads 666.

Author Lionel Fenn wrote "667, the neighbor of the beast".
Now he's going to have to rewrte.

If I remember correctly, the difference between 616 and 666 is because of the way Nero's name was rendered in Greek and Hebrew (or Aramaic). In other words, Nero's name in one language was _something_, and those numbers added up to 666. His name in the other language was _something else_, and that added up to 616.
Whatever. I might be wrong, but at least I'm long-windedly wrong.
I agree that the hard-line fundamentalist types might have a hard time with this. They had explaining the nuances of '666' down to a science.

"New to ace's, huh, mate?"

Not really, but every once in a while I get Ace confused with Donald Sensing.

Ace--

I completely mispelled the dude's name in my first post. It's actually "Irenaeus," if you want to correct the update.

I think the bloke who wrote this passage in Revelations was referring to his ex-wife's apartment number. Then her mother moved in a few doors down.

damn, that's my area code...

The NHL sections of the ESPN, CNN/SI, FoxSports, and Yahoo!Sports websites have individual player pages identified by 3-digit numbers. (The same numbers correspond to the same players on each site, so presumably the numbering system has a common source.)

I'm sure y'all can guess who #666 is.

ESPN
CNN/SI
Fox
Yahoo

Stumbo that is damned funny!

Thus spake Zorachus:

If I remember correctly, the difference between 616 and 666 is because of the way Nero's name was rendered in Greek and Hebrew (or Aramaic). In other words, Nero's name in one language was _something_, and those numbers added up to 666. His name in the other language was _something else_, and that added up to 616.

The Greek Neron Kesar, in Hebrew, has the numeric value of 666. The Latin Nero Caesar, in Hebrew, has the numeric value of 616.

616 is also thought to possible mean Caligula, who ruled before Nero. His full name, Gaius Caligula Caesar, transcribed into Hebrew numeric characters, is also 616.

Ummm... you guys seem to know an awful lot about Satan.

Friggin D&D geeks. :P hehehe

The hockey thing settles it for me, regardless of what some new-fangled papyri in Egypt say.

No way the antichrist is named "Richard Smehlik."

616? That's not scary. 666? Now that's spooky. I liked how in the Omen, Damien's 666 had the round parts of the 6's all bunched and the straight part sticking out like spokes. Couldn't do that with 616. No matter how you arrange that, it still looks like an area code.

No way the antichrist is named "Richard Smehlik."

And the 'head' of the church of satan's name is Peter.

So maybe Wormwood's given name is Rod?

Dick Smehlik, that sounds like a man Besty might be into! That's hot.

Then there is Robert Heinlein's take on the Number of the Beast -- where it's 6 to the 6th to the 6th -- which is a very large number indicating the how many alternate universes there were.

Look I've never been into the numbers thing. 666, 616, upside down crosses, and pentagrams don't matter. They're for ignorant malcontents trying to piss off mommy and daddy.
The only number that matters is 42.

From a marketing standpoint -

666? yes
616? not so much

Remember the new Coca Cola campaign?

Stumbo, great catch.

So I took the obvious step, and checked out player # 616

Ok, the name "Richard Smehlik" doesn't trigger anything, but guess who he plays for. Yep.

Yikes.

I'm 617... the guy across the street from the beast. I wish they'd pick up after him when he 'goes'.....

Sheesh.

Yes, the 616/666 debate has raged for centuries. But what is important isn't the number of manuscripts. Ha ha, this doesn't just happen to be the one that tips it past 50% for 616.

The problem with going by numbers is that an error in one manuscript can be copied by others, and then copies of those copies propogate the error, and so on. If for whatever reason that branch ends up copied more than another branch, thus yielding more total copies, that doesn't change the fact that it is an error. For that reason, the age of the manuscripts in question is of more importance than the sheer number of copies.

By sheer numbers, 666 wins. What has been known for a long time, though, is that 616 appears often in the earliest manuscripts. So if you only look at very early ones, it's unclear which is the correct number.

What's imporant about this find is this is the very earliest copy of this part of Revelation that has ever been found. And it says it's 616. That gives the 616 theory a lot of weight, far more than it just adding 1 to the 616 manuscript count.

Bob,
Doesn't it make sense that if an old copy had errors, it would be noticed and not copied that wayin the future?

While the Greek manuscripts are of perhaps the greatest importance, the writings of early church fathers who quoted Scripture should be considered. Scripture manuscripts in languages other than Greek are of significant importance, since they must have been translated from the Greek in the first place. How old a document is usually corresponds to its reliability. However, this should not be the only factor in its favor, as Scripture was being tampered with already even before 100 A.D. Other considerations as to the worthiness of a document are: how many other witnesses it agrees with, its distribution among sources (having agreement across other languages, times, types and families), the respectability of the witness (a document by Darwin would be considered less theologically reputable than one by Spurgeon), the continuity of the document over time, the context of the passage being reliable, and its reasonableness.

In this case, 666 is far more reliable - and that was far more info than anyone wanted to know.

Ed, Mr. Fenn's 667 is now the beast's cousin's father's brother's aunt's sister's uncle's friend's tax attorney's dentist's college dorm room buddy.

The older manuscripts are almost always LESS accurate. The tradition, even before Christ, was that when a scroll began to show age it was carefully hand copied, each section analyzed for errors, and when completed, the old manuscript destroyed. Some cults, though, worshiped the paper and hung on to any manuscript they could find, regardless of its accuracy. There are two documents cited as the oldest manuscripts. One is from one of those cults, is highly edited and was about to be thrown away when discovered several centuries ago. The other is kept by the Vatican, and only quickly scrawled copies done centuries ago by the same man who discovered the other one, are available. These earlier manuscripts are about as useful in determining what the Bible actually says as The DaVinci Code is, which is very little.

Mmmmm. Non-sequiter....

what are the new manuscripts based on if not the old ones?