The final book of the Christian Bible, Revelation, is overall quite cryptic, containing a number of allegorical figures and metaphorical references. The focus for this article is one of these, the so-called “number of the Beast” found in ch. 13 v. 18 of that very odd book.
At the outset it must be pointed out that, while Revelation has been accepted as canonical, sacred scripture by the vast majority of Christianity for c. 1,500 years, that wasn’t always the case. Many earlier Christian figures were either unaware of it, or did know it, but didn’t consider it authoritative or canonical.
Scholars generally date Revelation to the 90s CE for a number of reasons. First, St Irenaeus stated it was written during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (he ruled from 81 to 96 CE). Second, there are other mentions of events, such as the martyrdom of a Christian leader Antipas of Pergamum, victim of a presumed persecution by Domitian, within the text that suggest such a date.
While its author names himself “John,” and Christian legend claims this was none other than the apostle John, it’s not the case that he wrote it. Some other Christian named John — who had either been exiled or fled to the island of Patmos off the west coast of Anatolia (modern Turkey) — must have written it. He’s often referred to as “John of Patmos.”
Of note, St Jerome — who translated the Bible of his time into vernacular Latin — didn’t think Revelation worthy. Neither did many other Christian thinkers prior to his time. But Pope Damasus prevailing upon him to include it nevertheless. He didn’t actually translate Revelation; instead, he stitched together existing translations of the book and added that to the rest of his work. Ironically, it was this decision that caused later Christians to view it as canonical, and truly sacred scripture. His Vulgate came to be viewed as “the Bible” for most of Christendom, and Revelation’s inclusion within it essentially rendered it canon. This happened in spite of Jerome’s reservations and those of other earlier Christian thinkers.
Revelation is framed collectively as a letter to seven of the churches of Asia (i.e. Anatolia or modern Turkey) and consists of two unequal-length parts: Specific addresses, by Jesus, to each of those seven churches (i.e. the first three chapters); followed by the author’s vision of heaven and of the events that lead up to, and follow, what is presumably a coming apocalypse (i.e. the remaining 19 chapters).
As such, it’s completely unlike any of the other canon Christian document, and different from most other early Christian writings. It’s not that there were no other apocalyptic Christian texts; there certainly were some, including one which (for a while at least) had been near-canon, the Shepherd of Hermas which is centered on visions experienced by its author.
Even a casual glance at the contents of Revelation shows it’s full of mentions of strange things and what are probable metaphorical references. It’s often very cryptic, to the point that at least some of these references may have had meaning only to the author and no one else, so we may never know everything he’d referred or alluded to. Beyond that, however, the language itself is confusing at times and even self-contradictory. Take this, for example:
Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. (Rev 4:2-3)
It doesn’t take much to understand that jasper and sardius (i.e. a form of carnelian) aren’t the same kind of stone, so why would the author have said the person sitting on the throne was like both? What does it mean, moreover, for a person to be “like” a jasper stone or sardius? Did the person appear to be made of one of those materials (as in, a statue)? Also, rainbows don’t resemble emeralds, although a few manuscripts have “halo” in place of “rainbow,” which makes more sense assuming the halo is green in color).
There are plenty of other passages like this in Revelation wherein the author appears almost to stitch things together without paying attention to whether or not it makes sense. Scholars have attributed this to his apparent wish to include symbology or semiotics into the text he was writing. Again, the point of all this is often elusive and may never be discerned.
Although many people talk about “the Beast of Revelation,” that book actually mentions two beasts, both of them under the direction of the Dragon (who is identified with Satan/Lucifer). They are “the Beast out of the Sea” and “the Beast out of the Earth.” It’s the first of these, the Beast out of the Sea, which is the chief subject of this article. The second is sometimes called “the False Prophet” due to his role in the narrative (i.e. it contrives to get people to honor and obey the first beast).
Both beasts are described in ways that defy sense. The Beast out of the Sea “resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion” (Rev 13:2). Note, this is in line with very old mythical and literary tropes which told of creatures which combined various animal features, so that in itself isn’t unusual. Other details, though, clearly are an appeal to various symbols, such as it having seven heads with ten horns (that’d work, if four of the heads had one horn each and the remaining three had two) and a crown on each horn. There’s also mention of a “blasphemous name” on each of the heads. (Does that mean the Beast actually had seven different names? That might become an issue latter.)
Obviously both of these are metaphorical constructs, the elements of which all have significant and often individual symbolic meaning. Whole tomes have been penned concerning this; I can’t hope to cover much of this here. Suffice it to say that what’s commonly known as “the number of the Beast” is merely a part of this sea of symbolic elements that make up Revelation.
It’s in the context of what the second Beast does that the “number” of the first Beast is relayed:
And he [the second Beast] causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six. (Rev 13:16-18)
Note that the original Greek for “a man” in that third sentence is ανθρωπου (anthrōpou), which can mean either a specific man, or mankind generally. Since the context of the passage concerns a single creature, the Beast from the Sea, and because it’s hard to see how mankind could have a specific “name,” it’s typically translated as “a man,” as quoted above, although some editions will note the alternate meaning.
That’s one issue that might conceivably complicate things. Another is that a small number of manuscripts render the Beast’s number as 616 rather than 666. Not only do we have these differing manuscripts, Irenaeus commented that there was a variation, so it was a topic of discussion in his own time (the late 2nd ). He states 666 is the accepted number (but doesn’t state what the variant value is), and it turns out to be the majority in the manuscripts we have. So that’s how it’s translated (although a few editions note the 616 variant).
That these two specific numbers, 666 and 616, are the only ones ever found described as “the number of the Beast” is significant. But understanding how, requires a discussion of how numbers relate to names in classical times, and especially in classical eastern Christendom.
There were no specific numerals in the Greco-Roman world, as we have (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.). Numbers were written using the available letters of the scribe’s language, with particular known values being assigned to those letters. How the Romans did this, in their own Latin, will be familiar to most westerners. The year 2024, for example, is MMXXIV in Roman numerals.
In Hellenic cultures, numbers naturally were written with Greek letters. The number 666 was written as χξς (or chi-xi-sigma) and 616 was χις (or chi-iota-sigma), since chi had the value 600, xi was 60, iota was 10, and sigma was 6.
It was, of course, one thing to spell out a number in this way, within a text. The side effect of this is that any Greek word or name could be boiled down — via adding up the values of its constituent letters — to a numeric value. The Hebrew language had a similar approach to numbers. Note that both of these differed from Roman numerals in that within the latter, the positioning of the numbers mattered (XI, for instance, has the value 11, but IX has the value 9) and only some of the letters had numeric values, so that not all Latin words or names could be turned into numbers. (In fact, very few of them could be.)
The practice of converting words or names to numbers in this fashion is called “gematria.” As such, it’s related to what is now known as “numerology.” It was a very old practice even in classical times, and had been employed in many cultures which leaned on a number of different languages and writing systems.
Given all of this, and assuming the Beast’s number is also that of “a man,” it makes sense to look for any single person whose name might, somehow, be rendered by classical gematria, either in Greek or Hebrew, into both 666 and 616.
It turns out there is just such a person. It’s someone who was very well known among the literate of the late 1st century eastern Roman Empire, which is when and where Revelation had been written. That person is none other than the Roman emperor Nero.
The way this works is as follows: Nero’s name in Greek was Νερων Καισαρ (Nerōn Kaisar) while his name in Latin was Nero Caesar. These were transliterated into Hebrew as נרונ קסר and נרו קסר respectively. The former is rendered by Hebrew gematria to 666, while the latter is 616.
Scholars have long sought in vain, through all the available chronicles of eastern Mediterranean history, to find anyone whose name could have been rendered into those two specific values by two separate means. Effectively, “the Beast from the Sea” can only have been Emperor Nero.
One might wonder why — of all the Roman Emperors that “John of Patmos” might have selected as a prime supporting villain in his allegorical drama — he chose Nero. It’s easy to say it was because Nero had been widely despised by most of Greco-Roman society (in his own time and after). Or that he’d persecuted Christians in Rome (which legendarily claimed the lives of Sts Peter and Paul). But there were other despised emperors, and stories of persecution by various of them had been told among Christians by the end of the 1st century.
So we’re left asking, “Why Nero?”
There was a legend in the Roman Empire of the late 1st century that Nero would somehow come back from the dead or turn out never to have been killed. He would, according to this legend, emerge in Persia, then lead an army westward and reconquer the Empire. There aren’t many mentions of this legend, however, it is described in the Sybilline Oracles, a somewhat haphazard collection of Jewish, Christian and pagan writings that date as early as the middle of the 1st century, around the time of Nero’s reign and death. It's also mentioned briefly by a small number of ancient authors, including Greek philosopher Dio Chrysostom.
Thus, in a number of ways, “the Beast out of the Sea” can also be identified with Emperor Domitian (even though his name doesn’t render via gematria as either 666 or 616). Later in Revelation one can see where this makes some sense, where “John” is told:
Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads [of the Beast] are seven mountains on which the woman [the Great Harlot] sits, and they are seven kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction. (Rev 17:9-11)
Elsewhere there are indications that these “seven mountains” are the proverbial “seven hills of Rome.” The five “kings” that “have fallen” would, therefore, be the five Emperors of Rome who ruled between Nero and Domitian (i.e. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, and Titus). Domitian would be the current ruling “king,” assuming Revelation had been written during his reign. The seventh would be his successor (whoever that might turn out to be). The eighth, i.e. “the beast which was and is not,” may well similarly be a resurrected Nero/Domitian, consigned to “destruction” since the Lord has taken control of the world.
A lot of this fits like a glove, although the part about the “eighth” king — seemingly tacked on to the narrative after the figure of the Beast with only seven heads had been firmly established — could make it messy. The bottom line is that Revelation describes, metaphorically and allegorically, both its author’s history as well as current events, and even a bit of uncertainty that lurked in society and Christendom in his own day.
As with wondering why Nero plays a villainous role in the Revelation narrative, it’s also worth looking into why Christians, including “John of Patmos,” would have hated Domitian as much as they did, to the point where they identified him with the also-very-hated Nero. It may be due to a belief that Domitian had titled himself Dominus et Deus (“Lord and God”); and that he’d launched a widespread persecution of Christians.
There’s evidence for the former in accounts by the Roman historian Cassius Dio that he’d awarded himself that title. Another, Suetonius, records that one of his dictated letters began with that formulation, but this may have been an embellishment by the official who’d physically penned it. It’s reported elsewhere that he’d explicitly rejected the title of Dominus. There’s no other evidence supporting the contention. It may simply have been a story that was told of him, that had no truth to it.
There’s even less evidence for the latter. Christian authors refer to persecutions by Domitian, but beyond such stories being told mostly within Christendom, there’s no evidence of any such thing. In the 4th century, Eusebius asserts that Domitian had persecuted Christians, but that it was limited and abortive.
It’s true that Domitian was far from beloved within the Roman Empire. Many authors, pagan and Christian alike, had compared him with Nero in terms of his corruption, cruelty, and ineptitude. But we can’t be sure he’d truly singled out Christianity for even-more-cruel treatment. Domitian spent most of his reign in and around Rome, campaigning for a while in the northern Balkans and in the western Empire, so it doesn’t appear that a Christian in western Anatolia, home region of “John of Patmos,” would have had much proximity to him, to the point he knew something of Domitian’s doings that otherwise went unrecorded.
It was long believed — and even now most modern Christians assume — that the vision in Revelation of the earth undergoing a series of tribulations, a terrible battle being fought, Jesus arriving with heaven’s armies, the wicked being overcome, the Dragon (i.e. Satan) and all its minions defeated, and the emergence of a New Jerusalem and a New Earth, is somehow a description of a future event.
Asserting that the Beast can only have been Nero, who’d ruled and died decades before Revelation was penned near the end of the 1st century, turns that assumption on its head. It means this was a vision of past events, rather than a prediction or “prophecy” of the future.
Other details in the text appear likewise point to Nero being “the Beast out of the Sea.” For example, per verse 13:5b, the Beast had “authority to act for forty-two months” which is as long as the period of Nero’s reported persecution of Christians had been.
Nothing about this is rocket science, nor is it novel. Also, it’s not only “the number of the Beast” pointing to Nero, a figure in its author’s past, that indicates Revelation as a whole allegorically or symbolically describes past events rather than future ones. It was worked out by Biblical scholars over the past century and a half, and is an approach known as “preterism” or sometimes “historicism.”
With this in mind, it should be possible to go back through Revelation and line up its many different visions, identifying them as events in the history of its author. Particularly, and in general terms, the so-called “Tribulation” would, in this view, align with the First Roman-Jewish War from 66 to 70 CE. The rise of the “New Jerusalem,” in turn, would result from the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans in 70, leaving only Christianity standing and representing something of a “new world” for followers of the Abrahamic deity.
The message of Revelation, then, is very simple and obvious: God had already “cleared the decks,” as it were, of his enemies, and set the world right. Judaism had been revealed as a now-obsolete religion. It had been judged faulty and was replaced by Christianity. The faith’s other enemies (i.e. other nations and Rome in particular) now operated inside the framework of the “new Earth” that God had established.
Given all of the above, Revelation’s author, “John of Patmos,” was deeply disturbed by persecution his fellow Christians had suffered, including within his own time (e.g. his reference to the martyr Antipas in Pergamum). In this regard, Emperor Domitian was the living villain of his time, and he is kind of a backdrop element for the entire narrative. It’s true that many eastern Christians had been deeply affected by the Roman-Jewish War, and as far as we know, it’s true that Emperor Nero had launched a localized persecution of Christians in and around the city of Rome. Domitian’s own supposed persecution of Christians, as has already been noted, was more myth than reality, but Christians of the time were concerned about it.
Still, there are elements of the book that do point to future events — or more accurately, may refer to future events. Those come after the thousand years of Satan’s imprisonment, at which point he will again stir up “the nations” to war to attack “the saints,” but they’ll be consumed by fire descending from heaven, Satan right along with them (see Rev 20:7-10).
This bit of narrative is almost an afterthought, not unlike the above-quoted angel’s interpretation of “John’s” vision in Revelation 17. I’m not saying either of these are what Biblical scholars refer to as “interpolations,” additions to the text after they were composed, but the author may have thrown them in during the process of composing and editing his own original work in order to elaborate on what he’d already penned. (It’s something writers are apt to do. I just did it, myself, with this parenthetical.)
Since modern Christians have no significant knowledge of the world in which Revelation was first written, no understanding of the language used by its author, and no real comprehension of the region and era, they tend to take things out of context. In the case of Revelation, with its abundantly fantastic trappings and cryptic references, this causes them to weave fantastic tales which had no reality at the time the book was written and no bearing whatsoever on its actual content.
For example, many modern evangelical Christians fear the coming of someone whom they presume will be “the Beast,” who’ll force everyone to have his number tattooed on their foreheads and/or hands in order to buy and sell things, and thus get by. They’ve had to invent scenarios in which such a thing appears possible, such as confusing “the number of the Beast” required for buying and selling, with things like UPC codes on products.
Yes, there’s actually a school of thought that the number 666 is embedded in barcodes on everything we buy. That UPC barcodes are placed on products, not tattooed on people, doesn’t appear to have occurred to any of this conspiracy theory’s proponents, but they’re committed to it nonetheless.
It’s long past time for Christians to stop worrying about some future “Beast” who will someday inflict a terrible “tribulation” on the world, and especially its Christians. That isn’t something that was “predicted” in Revelation at all. “The Beast out of the Sea” is a character in long-ago history that no one now needs to be concerned with.
And that’s just how it is.
Quotations from the Book of Revelation taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation.
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