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July 27, 2007
Number of the beast
The prefix to the latest images I am capturing on my digital camera : 666
The number of email messages in my inbox this morning : 666
The middle three numbers in the phone number of someone I talked to recently : 666
The shape of a birthmark just along my hairline : 666*
Weird huh?
I'm not superstitious, the fact that I am noticing what the christian bible calls 'the mark of the beast' is probably akin to the when you hear an unusual word and then suddenly read and hear it everywhere.
It's not that the word has suddenly sprang to prominence, its just that you have been made aware of it. Humans used to be hunter-gatherers which required a well-developed pattern matching ability. A hunter that couldn't spot the disguised outline of a predator or of some game would either be dinner or have none.
This pattern matching can get in the way and create some confusion, especially if taken at face value. The feeble minded tend to go overboard with this - take for example the cheese sandwich with the face of mother Theresa, or the freshly lopped tree limb that has an image of 'their lord'**.
The 'images' are usually so crude and ambiguous that you might as well say its osama bin laden as Jesus - the image depicts a long faced man with a beard - whats your fancy?
Anyway, 666 is not the number of the beast. Early christians used numerology to 'encrypt' their writings, which were in places as much news as scripture. The 'beast' they talked about was not the anthropomorphic evil encapsulated in the mythic figure of Beelzebub.
In the early days Nero was a great persecutor of the christian sect. It was useful for him to take attention away from his malfeasance and misdeeds. He was the Roman emperor responsible for the most christian deaths, hence his moniker 'the beast'. Instead of mentioning him by name the early christians encoded his name using numerology and only referred to him in that tangential manner.
However, his number is not 666. A few years ago some early christian writing were discovered in an ancient midden heap. Only recently with the help of x-ray and great patience were the scrolls unrolled. It was discovered that the number of the beast was actually 616.
So there.
* Note: I'm kidding about this one :)
** their lord, not mine
Posted by dottie at July 27, 2007 12:23 PM
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