There is much that Christians, and other religious nuts, have to say about the Number of the Beast, thus 666. Curiously, the "Holy Bible" reads "6 and 6 and 6" which is humorously 18. Multiplied, 6x6x6 is 216. Of course, this is just humor, because the original Greek in that silly gnostic book of "Revelation" is actually 666.
SF has an interesting thread on the Roman Numerals of 666:
666 - The sum of six of the seven numerals is D+C+L+X+V+I=666. The letter M is missing. This is a nice playing with numbers and results from the pairs (1,5), (10,50) und (100,500).
It is more interesting that 666 is the largest triangular number of equal numerals. There is 666=1+2+3+...+35+36=36*37/2.
One Comment from this thread: 666 is actually DCLXVI in roman numerals, and that D,C,L,X,V and I, in turn, are the first six symbols in the roman numerical system in reverse order (i.e. I, V, X, L, C and D backwards). It's like us writing 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0, and then someone coming along to add them all up to get 45!
What follows is some findings when "666 roman" is Googled:
In Mathematics
Six hundred [and] sixty six is the sum of the first 36 natural numbers (i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 34 + 35 + 36 = 666), and thus a triangular number.
Since 36 is both square and triangular, 666 is the sixth number of the form n2(n2 + 1) / 2 (sequence A037270 in OEIS) and the eighth number of the form n(n + 1)(n2 + n + 2) / 8 (doubly triangular numbers).A002817
It is an abundant number.
The number of prime numbers up to 666 is 121, the square of the number of prime numbers up to 36.
666 is the 60th 12-factored number; 60 is the first 12-factored number.
The harmonic mean of the decimal digits of 666 is (trivially—all repdigit natural numbers have this property) an integer: 3/(1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6) = 6, making 666 the 54th number with this property.
In base 10, 666 is a repdigit (and therefore a palindromic number) and a Smith number. A prime reciprocal magic square based on 1/149 in base 10 has a magic total of 666.
The Roman numeral for 666, DCLXVI, has exactly one occurrence of all symbols whose value is less than 1000 (D=500, C=100, L=50, X=10, V=5, I=1).
666 is a member of the Indices of prime Padovan sequence, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 19, 30, 37, 84, 128, 469, 666, 1262, 1573, 2003, 2210, ... (sequence A112882 in OEIS).
In other fields
* 666 is the magic sum, or sum of the magic constants of a six by six magic square, any row or column of which adds up to 111.
* The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666.[2]
* 666 was a winning lottery number in the 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal, in which equipment was tampered to favor a 4 or 6 as each of the three individual random digits.[3]
* 666 was the original name of the Macintosh SevenDust computer virus that was discovered in 1998.
* In the Bible, 666 is the number of Adonikam's descendants who return to Jerusalem and Judah from the Babylonian exile (see Ezra 2:13).
* The number 666 is a frequent visual element of Aryan Brotherhood tattoos.
* In Kabbalistic Judaism the number 666 represents the creation and perfection of the world. The world was created in 6 days, and there are 6 cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Up, Down). 6 is also the numerical value of one of the letters of God's name.[4]
616
In May 2005, it was reported that scholars at Oxford University using advanced imaging techniques[9] had been able to read previously illegible portions of the earliest known record of the Book of Revelation (a 1,700 year old papyrus), from the Oxyrhynchus site, Papyrus 115 or P115, dating one century after Irenaeus. But the existance of manuscripts attesting to 616 has been known long before this finding, the other early witness Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C) has it written in full: ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ, hexakosiai deka hex (lit. "six hundred sixteen").[10]
Significantly, P115 aligns with Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C)[citation needed]. Thus, it is argued that P115 has superior testimony to that of P47 (Papyrus 47) which aligns with Codex Sinaiticus and together form the second-best witness to the Book of Revelation[citation needed]. This has led some scholars to conclude that 616 is the original number of the beast.[11]
The NRSV translation for Rev 13:18 includes this translation note: "Other ancient authorities read six hundred and sixteen".
Mark of Commerce
Those who hold to Futurist Christian eschatology believe that the rise of a supranational currency could be a hallmark of the End Times.[43]
Religious difficulties with a supranational currency currently exist (see World currency – Political difficulties). According to the Futurist view, to overcome the extant difficulties the Antichrist will use forced religious syncretism[44] (i.e. in the name of counterterrorism and world economic stability) to enable the creation of the supranational currency. Some interpret the mark as a requirement for all commerce to mean that the mark might actually be an object with the function of a credit card (e.g. implanted RFID tags).
Afraid of the 666 number? That mental illness is called Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.
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