666 in gematria: the number of the beast, worked out

1. What Revelation 13:18 says

The number comes at the end of Revelation 13, which describes a beast from the sea and a second beast that makes everyone take a mark before they can buy or sell. In the King James Version:

Three details matter for gematria:

• “The number of his name.” Verse 17 ties a name to a number, which is exactly what gematria does: add up the letters of a name and you get a total.
• “Count.” The Greek verb is psēphisatō, from psēphos, the pebble used for counting. It shares its root with isopsephy, the Greek name for gematria.
• “Six hundred threescore and six.” A score is 20, so threescore is 60, and 600 + 60 + 6 = 666.

The phrase translated “the number of a man”, arithmos anthrōpou, can also be read as “a human number”, and modern translations differ. Either way, the verse invites the reader to count. It gives the total, but not the name.

2. 666 in Greek numerals: chi, xi, stigma

Revelation was written in Greek, and Greek used its letters as numbers: one set of letters for the units, one for the tens and one for the hundreds. Any number below a thousand needs at most three letters, and 666 is written with three: chi, xi and stigma.

Stigma is not a letter of the ordinary alphabet. The numeral for six was originally digamma, a letter that had dropped out of use; scribes came to write it with a sign shaped like the ligature of sigma and tau, called stigma.

The Greek text behind the King James Version, the Textus Receptus, prints the number as χξϛ. Other manuscripts, including the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus, spell it out in words, hexakosioi hexēkonta hex, “six hundred sixty-six”, and modern critical editions follow them.

Adding up the letters of a name was familiar in the Greek world. Christian writers noted, for example, that the Greek name of Jesus, Ἰησοῦς, totals 888. What is gematria? has more of that history.

3. The 616 variant

Not every early copy says 666. Papyrus 115, a fragment found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, was written in the third century or soon after and is one of the two oldest surviving copies of this passage. Its surviving text reads χιϛ: chi 600 + iota 10 + stigma 6 = 616. The other, Papyrus 47, is also from the third century and reads 666. The fifth-century Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus spells 616 out in words, and the same reading turns up in the Latin text used by Tyconius.

The variant was known very early. Irenaeus of Lyon, writing Against Heresies around 180, defended 666 as the number “found in all the most approved and ancient copies”, confirmed by “those men who saw John face to face”. He blamed 616 on copyists who “vitiated the middle number in the name, deducting the amount of fifty from it”.

His arithmetic is exact. The two numbers differ only in the middle numeral: xi, 60, in 666, and iota, 10, in 616. 60 − 10 = 50.

Most textual critics follow Irenaeus and print 666. But 616 is not a late slip, and the best-known explanation of 666 accounts for both numbers.

4. The Nero Caesar reading, letter by letter

The reading most often given by modern biblical scholars, argued since the 1830s, takes 666 as the name of the emperor Nero. It works in Hebrew letters, not Greek. The Greek form of the name, Neron Kaisar, is written in Hebrew as נרון קסר (nrwn qsr), and Hebrew letters, like Greek ones, have number values.

The Latin form of the name is Nero, without the final n. Spell it that way, נרו קסר, and the final nun drops out: Nun 50 + Resh 200 + Vav 6 + Qof 100 + Samekh 60 + Resh 200 = 616. That is the variant, to the unit, which is why many scholars think a copyist who knew the name as Nero adjusted the number to match. On this reading, 666 and 616 are the same name in two spellings.

Two further points are usually cited in support. An Aramaic document from Wadi Murabba’at in the Judean Desert, dated to the second year of Nero’s reign, spells his name and title in exactly this way. And Richard Bauckham has pointed out that the Greek word for beast, thērion, written in Hebrew letters as תריון, also totals 666: Tav 400 + Resh 200 + Yod 10 + Vav 6 + Final nun 50.

The reading is widely held, not settled, and critics raise several objections. Revelation is written in Greek, and in Greek letters ΝΕΡΩΝ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ totals 1337, so the reader has to know to switch alphabets. Caesar is often spelled with a yod, קיסר, which would make the total 676. Gematria is not a known feature anywhere else in Revelation. And 616 fits another emperor too: ΓΑΙΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ, Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula, totals 616 in Greek letters. The Hebrew letter values used in this section are all in the Hebrew gematria chart.

5. What equals 666 in English gematria

This site uses a different system: English letters, with A = 6, B = 12 and so on up to Z = 156, each letter’s place in the alphabet times six. Because every letter value is a multiple of six, every total is too, and 666 is 6 × 111. So a word totals 666 here exactly when its letters add up to 111 with A = 1, B = 2 … Z = 26, the cipher called English Ordinal in the multi-cipher calculator.

A few facts about 666 in this cipher follow from the arithmetic alone:

• No word shorter than five letters can reach it. Four Z’s total 624; five total 780.
• For eight-letter words it is close to the middle of the range. Of all possible strings of eight letters, about 1 in 55 totals 666, and only five of the 201 possible eight-letter totals are more common. Computer, humanity, majority, recovery and strength all have eight letters.
• Its digital root is 9 (6 + 6 + 6 = 18, then 1 + 8 = 9), and it is not a base-root value (the totals 6, 60, 114 and so on, in steps of 54): that ladder goes from 654 straight to 708.
• 616 cannot occur. It is not a multiple of six, so no word or phrase totals 616 in this cipher.

The list mixes the striking with the ordinary. Computer and humanity look pointed next to “the number of a man”; usually, somewhere and majority do not. All of them are here for the same reason: their letters add up to 111. Meanwhile the verse’s own words miss. BEAST totals 282, MARK OF THE BEAST 864 and NUMBER OF THE BEAST 1044.

NERO CAESAR, typed in English letters, totals 594. The Hebrew reading does not carry over, because each cipher is its own measuring system. That is why this site names its cipher beside every value, and why this site uses English gematria explains the choice.

6. How 666 has been fitted to names

Revelation gives a number and invites a name, and for nearly two thousand years readers have supplied one. Usually it has been the name of someone the writer already opposed. The record is worth knowing, because it shows how much room the method leaves.

Irenaeus: several names, no firm verdict

Irenaeus listed Greek names that fit. EUANTHAS, LATEINOS (Λ 30 + Α 1 + Τ 300 + Ε 5 + Ι 10 + Ν 50 + Ο 70 + Σ 200) and TEITAN (Τ 300 + Ε 5 + Ι 10 + Τ 300 + Α 1 + Ν 50) all total 666. He judged LATEINOS very probable and TEITAN the most credible of the names he knew, but he would not commit himself: “It is therefore more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment of the prophecy, than to be making surmises.”

The Reformation: each side found the other

Michael Stifel, a Lutheran mathematician, took the Roman-numeral letters in LEO DECIMVS, Pope Leo X: L 50 + D 500 + C 100 + I 1 + M 1000 + V 5 = 1656. He removed the M, saying it stood for mysterium, and added an X because LEO DECIMVS has ten letters: 1656 − 1000 + 10 = 666. He went on to predict that the world would end at 8 a.m. on 18 October 1533. It did not, and he lost his post as pastor.

On the Catholic side, Petrus Bungus reached 666 from Martin Luther’s name. He numbered the Latin alphabet A = 1 to I = 9, K = 10 to S = 90 and T = 100 to Z = 500, with U and V as one letter, and spelled the name MARTIN LUTERA, dropping the H and adding an A: M 30 + A 1 + R 80 + T 100 + I 9 + N 40 = 260, and L 20 + U 200 + T 100 + E 5 + R 80 + A 1 = 406. 260 + 406 = 666. The usual spelling, MARTIN LUTHER, gives 673.

From the early seventeenth century, Protestant writers read VICARIVS FILII DEI as Roman numerals: V 5 + I 1 + C 100 + I 1 + V 5 + I 1 + L 50 + I 1 + I 1 + D 500 + I 1 = 666. The sum works only by counting every letter on its own, so the IV in VICARIVS counts as 6 rather than 4, and the phrase is not an official papal title.

The twentieth century

A cipher that starts at A = 100 gives HITLER 666: H 107 + I 108 + T 119 + L 111 + E 104 + R 117. Ronald Wilson Reagan was singled out because each of his three names has six letters.

What the record shows

Put the examples side by side and the freedom is plain. A writer could choose the alphabet (Greek, Hebrew, Latin, English), the cipher (standard values, Roman numerals, A = 100), the spelling (Neron or Nero, Luther or Lutera) and the adjustments (Stifel’s M for mysterium). Each choice is another chance to land on 666, and in these cases the choices were made after the target was known. In this site’s cipher alone, about 1 in 55 eight-letter strings totals 666. With a few cipher and spelling options in play, finding 666 in a chosen name is mostly a matter of persistence.

This site’s own approach to Revelation 13, set out in Determining the Identity of the Beast – Rev. 13, works the other way round. Fix one cipher and the spelling before calculating, test every candidate and its variants by the same rules, log the non-matches with the matches, and treat a total as evidence to weigh rather than proof. A control set, a handful of unrelated names run through the same cipher, shows how often names with no connection to the verse reach the same number.

Quick answers

What does 666 mean in gematria?

It is the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18, which asks the reader to count it, “for it is the number of a man”. In Greek numerals it is χξϛ: 600 + 60 + 6. The reading most widely held by scholars takes it as Nero Caesar spelled in Hebrew letters, נרון קסר, which totals 666.

Why do some manuscripts say 616?

Papyrus 115, one of the two oldest surviving copies of the passage, and the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus both read 616. The other third-century copy, Papyrus 47, reads 666. Irenaeus knew the 616 reading around 180 and called it a copyist’s error. Spelling Nero’s name in Hebrew without its final nun, as in the Latin form Nero, takes off 50 and gives exactly 616.

What equals 666 in English gematria?

On this site, any word whose letters add up to 111 with A = 1 to Z = 26, because each letter is worth six times that. Computer, humanity, New York, perfection, strength and usually all total 666. No word shorter than five letters can.

Does gematria prove who the beast is?

No. It can show that a name totals 666 under a stated cipher and spelling, but many names do, and history is full of 666s found in a writer’s opponents. A match is evidence to weigh, not proof. Results on this site do not predict events or identify anyone with certainty.

Can a word total 616 on this site?

No. Every letter here is worth a multiple of six, so every total is a multiple of six, and 616 is not one. The nearest totals this cipher can produce are 612 and 618.

Sources and further reading

• Revelation 13:16–18, King James Version.
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 5, chapter 30, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers translation.
• Delbert R. Hillers, “Revelation 13:18 and a Scroll from Murabba’at”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1963).
• Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (T&T Clark, 1993).
• Michael Stifel, MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews.
• Number of the beast, Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• On this site’s blog: Determining the Identity of the Beast – Rev. 13.