And his number is 616?

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Another important thing to keep in mind concerning 616 is that the Torah (The Law) includes 613 mitzvot or «laws». If you treat Jesus' words like God's word and command, you will acquire three more mitzvot from the Gospel:

1 «Don't swear!» Matt 5:33ff
2 «Love each other!» John 15:17
3 «The Great Commission» Matt 28:16ff

That's a simple equation: 613 + 3 = 616

«For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.» [ESV] Matthew 5:18f

In the case of 616 I think it's fair to assume the middle iota passed from the infamous number from the Book of Revelation and was replaced by a xi, fulfilling the prophecy in the process. Doesn't really have to be a bad thing, but it's what I think happened, and which I think the Gospel and Revelation warned us about.

«Number of a man» vs. «Number of man»

The Greek text says; or like Yoda would say:
ἀριθμὸς [the number] γὰρ [indeed] ἀνθρώπου [a man's] ἐστίν [it is].

The concept of having Man (Heb. Adam, Gr. Anthropos) to mean Mankind or the Human Race is modern and subject to modern English and the Church mostly. It originates in how the Church reshaped Greek in the centuries after Christ. The NT concept of «The Son of Man» for instance, that is Gr. «ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου», lit. «son of the man;» as if to read the «The Son of Mankind» is grammatically and syntactically very unGreek and in concept is foreign to any Biblical concepts of sons of men or gods or messiahs, whether promised or not— and was inserted into Greek language by the Church long after the fact. Greek had no such concept of definiteness until the Church came around and reshaped the language for their own means, to build support for their claim of divine right to rule. The Church are experts in historical anachronisms and backwards engineering history and language to support their claims.

Point is, when John wrote the words above, he certainly wasn't talking about any number of mankind, but the number of a man. These things are evident of how many of the concepts these texts describe are foreign to Greek and these and yet other signs show us that these texts were once written in other languages before they were standardised and recorded in Greek. «The Son of Man» is good proof the Gospels and Revelation were originally written— and thus intended to be read— in Hebrew/Aramaic. «Bene 'adam» is used several places in OT and simply means «son of Adam». When changing 616 into 666, they also changed «a man» into «man kind». Greek only has one article and it is definite. It is absent before anthropou, hence it is to be read «a man's».

The Church didn't just change the Greek grammar, however, they changed the bloody lexicons and introduced new words to backwards engineer scripture to mean new things. Hey they even reshaped the alphabets involved. They introduced capital letters in Greek and later minuscules in Latin, so they could gain support for their feudal system by discriminating between lord, Lord and LORD. Or like how in Greek there were no concept for «the Church» let alone a noun for it in the time of Jesus and Paul and John, and the noun Kyriakos wasn't introduced into Greek until a few hundred years after the books of NT were first written— still that doesn't stop «the Church» from preaching how Paul was all about «the Church» this and «the Church» that, when there was no such thing as «a Church» around. The early Christians held assembly (ekklesia, a gathering) in eachother's homes and since they were being persecuted, they could typically meet in secret hidings, like how they evidently used the catacombs under Rome during Nero.

Thus the Church has founded their claim of legitimacy on what some might call forgery and a puff of smoke. Those are tricky materials for building foundations. In fact, the Bible is not about «the Church» at all, although any modern bible you'd pick up will typically contain the word Church more than 100 times. Only twice are words similar to the later introduced noun Kyriakos used in the Bible, once by Paul in 1 Corinthians (κυριακὸν) and in the intro of John's Apocalypse (κυριακῇ). Both places they are adjectives and translates «the lord's». Noun here is either Gr. Kyrios or Lat. Curia. While Kyrios means Lord, Curia refers to the highest office of authority in Rome, House of the Senate (under the goddess Nike/Victoria- as in Nicea and «He who conquers», well, carry on). Paul assumably refers to the Eucharist as in «The Lord's [κυριακὸν] Supper» while John probably refers to a day in the Roman calendar, an incomplete dating reference, maybe he states it's a sabbath, or he simply opens his discourse with a subtle complaint about his lengthy imprisonment, for «one day for the Lord is like a thousand years to men».

QED: Revelation 13:18 says «the number of a man», NOT «the number of man».

originally posted by: micpsi
I disagree with you. Just look at the form of the two Greek letters iota and xi and ask yourselves this: was it more likely that iota was misread and re-written as xi or that xi was wrongly copied as iota? As iota is far simpler looking than xi, why would anyone have turned a simpler letter into one looking more complicated?!

Why? Because they wouldn't have to destroy the documents themselves. It's easy to change I into Ξ, but not the other way around.

Simply take the letter I and add three strikes to it and you change the number from 10 to 60:

I => Ξ

If you'd wan't to change Ξ into I, you would have to destroy the entire manuscript and rewrite it. See?

Another thing is how in many older manuscripts containing the uppercase Ξ (minuscule ξ) the surrounding letters are minuscules, like in Papyrus 47 [P47], suggesting foul play: