Beastly Manuscript Families

Tony has provided some valuable information in his comment on my last post. Many of you know that there are New Testament manuscript families. When the original New Testament letters and books were written, and gathered together, possibly around the end of the first century, it appears that copies went to different regions. In those regions, copies of those manuscripts were made with some distinctive variations. The variations were not major changes. Many were copiest mistakes. Some changes were made to correct perceived grammatical errors. Other changes were made to smooth-out the reading of hard passages. Out of these regions, copies were made of these manuscripts that incorporated the changes. An excellent book on the topic by a world renown expert is Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament.

Two of the major manuscript lines are the Alexandrian and the Byzantine. From what I recall, the Alexandrian family of manuscripts tends to be more polished than the Byzantine family. Tony had commented how one professor preferred the Byzantine majority text. Part of the reason, I would imagine, is the "less polished" nature of the Byzantine family. Here is how Revelation 13:18 is preserved in these two families (taken from the Parallel Greek New Testament Website):

Byzantine Majority
wde h sofia estin o ecwn noun yhfisatw ton ariqmon tou qhriou ariqmoV gar anqrwpou estin [kai] o ariqmoV autou [estin] cxs

Alexandrian
wde h sofia estin o ecwn noun yhfisatw ton ariqmon tou qhriou ariqmoV gar anqrwpou estin kai o ariqmoV autou exakosioi exhkonta ex

The number 666 is written differently in these two manuscript families.

Byzantine Majority
cxs

Alexandrian
exakosioi exhkonta ex

The Byzantine follows the ancient Greek way of writing numbers (cxs -- where c is the letter for 600, x is the letter for 60, and s is letter for 6), as I wrote about in a previous blog entry. The Alexandrian family writes the number in a long form, exakosioi exhkonta ex, where exakosioi literally means 6-hundreds, exhkonta literally means 6-tens, and ex is 6.

So, what are we to make out of all this? The road has a lot of interesting twists and turns.

There is one interesting theory on the variation of 666 with the number 616 that I read from Beale. If the scribe was working with a "Byzantine" manuscript with the number written as cxs, the central "digit" x (ksi) could have been written sloppily in the manuscript the scribe was copying from, it could have looked straight to him, like i (iota). The scribe would write cis in his copy, which is literally 616.

Tony offers a fascinating theory for 666 in the comments of my previous blog entry. Read it and see if it makes sense to you. I offer some theories in my original posting on the topic. Depending on how the number was written in the original manuscript John wrote, some of the theories would make more sense than others.

It's All Greek to Me

My little foray into the number of the beast in Revelation, looking at one ancient Greek manuscript fragment, P¹¹⁵ has made me realize I have quickly jumped into water way over my head. But that has not stopped me before.

I have found some interesting tools and images. One is a Greek Interlinear New Testament. Another is a website with links to photographs of many of the important Greek New Testament Manuscripts. You will get a username and password box. I took the hint and typed user name of "any" and password of "any" -- and I got in. I'm sure the NT Manuscript police are hot on my heals. I'll tell them that Jared did it, yeah, that's the ticket. :o)

The image on the upper left is taken from the Sinaiticus, a well known ancient New Testament manuscript now housed in the British Library in London. I saw it some years ago displayed in the British Museum. This is the section from Revelation 13:18. The darker Greek letters are the number of the beast -- literally 6-hundreds, 6-tens, and six. The pattern of "sixes" in this case is quite evident. My argument in my previous post, that readers and hearers of Revelation would not necessarily detect the pattern of sixes, is not true. It all depends on whether the original manuscripts wrote the numbers in abbreviated number form, as P¹¹⁵ did, or in the longer form as the Sinaiticus did.

You'll notice even in this brief segment of the Sinaiticus that there are no spaces between the words -- and no punctuation. This would be disconcerting to us, but I imagine with some practice, we could get used to it.

So Iranaeus, who wrote about the number of the beast being 6-hundreds, 6-tens, and 6, was not unusual, given the way the Sinaiticus has it.

The question is what was the original number number of the beast in Revelation? We do not have the original copy of Revelation. We only have copies made 200 years or later. This is not bad for classical ancient literature. The majority of ancient manuscripts have 666, the earliest copy of Revelation has 616. Some manuscripts have 665.

Revised: The Number of the Beast

Jared's comments caused me to examine more deeply the number of the beast. Some of my past assumptions were wrong, most notably the ease for the original readers/hearers of Revelation to see the series of three sixes as in 666. I made this assumption based on Iranaeus' comment (a Greek speaking church father who lived in the second century) that 666 was composed of 6 "hundreds", 6 "tens", and 6 "ones". From that I assumed that this pattern was readily discernible. However, when I examined the earliest manuscript fragment of Revelation 13:18, P¹¹⁵, which is dated roughly around 275-300 AD, it jogged my memory about how Greek numbers were written. They were not written as our decimal numbers are today.

The picture on the top left is the P¹¹⁵ manuscript fragment (the picture is taken from the Wikipedia article on Papyrus 115). While it was collected in the early 20^th century, it was only examined and cataloged at the end of the 20^th century. One of the interesting things about the manuscript is the number of the beast is 616, shown next to the red arrow -- an interesting variant to 666. In particular, notice how the number is written. The first digit is written like a "X" stands for 600. The second digit, written like a "I", stands for 10. The last digit, written like a "C", stands for 6 (the number looks like XIC). If this number was written as 666, as it is in the majority of the ancient Greek manuscripts, it would look something like: XEC. This is because the numbering system used in the Greek language at the time used the letters of the Greek alphabet for their numbers, and differently than how we use our digits. We recyle our 10 digits, 0 through 9, over and over in our numbers. The position of the digit tells us by what power of 10 we are to multiply that digit. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, did not recycle their "digits", which were actually their alphabet letters, in the same way we do. In the ancient Greek number system, the first 9 letters of their alphabet were used for the numbers 1 through 9 (the number zero was an Arabic invention that wouldn't be discovered or used in the West for some time). The second 10 letters were for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90, respectively. The third 10 letters were used for 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900. Numbers larger than 999 started limited recycling of the first 9 letters, with a superscript or subscript. Larger numbers were more complicated. That is a partial reason why 1000, and 10,000 were considered to be huge numbers in the Bible and seldom used. They were more complicated to express and probably seldom used in everyday life.

Quite frankly, looking at this now, I would not expect a typical ancient person reading the Greek number "XEC" to notice that it followed a pattern of string of "C"s, differing by multiples of 10. Iranaeus did, but thinking about it, I think that was a bit unusual. Iranaeus was also aware of the 616 variant of 666, but preferred the 666.

So, what are we to make of the 616 in this early Revelation manuscript fragment? I will discuss that in my next blog entry.

The executive summary, it could very well be a coded reference to Nero as a type of the Anti-Christ, arrived in in some interesting ways. My earlier comments about the pattern of three sixes (such as an unholy Trinity of sixes) looks less likely to an ancient audience. Perhaps on further reflection I might change my mind, but it appears my previous thoughts were too conditioned to our modern number system. Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the sophistication of the ancient reader/listener.

For a good discussion of the Greek numbering system, see the Ancient Greek Mathematics website of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Go to the paragraph that has "second ancient Greek number system" towards the middle of the page.

Revelation: The Number of the Beast

Revelation 12 introduces the Dragon, who is identified as Satan. Revelation 13 introduces two beasts, the sea beast and the earth beast (also known as the false prophet). The Dragon, the Sea Beast, and the Earth Beast form a false trinity, that counterfeits the true Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

How do they counterfeit the Trinity? In several ways:

• The Dragon wears crowns, claiming authority that does not belong to him.


• The Dragon summons the Sea Beast in a way that mimics the Father calling the Son.


• The Sea Beast has a fatal wound that mimics Christ's death and resurrection.


• The Sea Beast summons the Earth Beast in a distorted imitation of Christ and the Father calling the Holy Spirit.


• The Earth Beast causes people to worship the Sea Beast, in a distorted way that the Holy Spirit causes believers to worship Christ.

The Earth Beast also has a counterfeit mark for its disciples, mimicking the seal God gives to his own in Revelation chapter 7.

Revelation 13:18 (ESV) says, "This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666."

There has been a lot of speculation on this number. Some argue for the Roman Emperor Nero. Reason? If you take the Greek spelling of "Emperor Nero", which is something like "Kaiser Nero", transliterate the Greek letters into Hebrew letters (and fudge a little, because one Greek vowel does not have a corresponding Hebrew letter, so come up with a Hebrew letter), then use the corresponding numbers that each of those Hebrew letters represent, you get 666. Amazing, eh?

Well, not really. The method of adding up letters is called gematria. G.K. Beale writes: "None of the many solutions using gematria is ultimately satisfactory because there are so many names, ancient and modern, that come to 666. There are so many proposals because it is easy to turn a name into a number but hard to deduce the right name from a number." (G.K. Beale: The Book of Revelation, A Commentary on the Greek Text, Eerdmans, 1999, p. 721) Beale goes on to mention three rules that commentators often employ:

• If the proper name will not yield it, add a title.


• If a sum cannot be found in Greek, try Hebrew, or Latin.


• Do not be too particular about the spelling.

Vern Poythress has noted that using this approach, people identified with 666 include Nero, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian (Vern Poythess: The Returning King, A Guide to the Book of Revelation, P and R Publishers, 2000, p. 147). Sometime ago I wrote a program showing Bill Gates of Microsoft, if you sum up his name the right way, you get 666.

Trying to find a particular name that adds up to 666 and identify that person as the Anti-Christ misses what the text of Revelation is saying. Revelation is using symbolism. The number 666 itself is very suggestive in its symbolism. The number 7 is often symbolic in the Bible for completeness. There are seven days in a week. There are seven Spirits of God in Revelation. Man was created on the sixth day. Man is not complete unlike God who is complete. Hence the number 6 falls short of the completion or perfection of God. There are three sixes. The Dragon, Sea Beast, and Earth Beast try to mimic the Holy Trinity -- but they fall short, hence the 666.

Searching for the one Anti-Christ beast sometime in the future, or even in the past, misses that the spirit of anti-Christ is present among us know. We live in a fallen world and the culture of this world is not to be identified with God's precepts. Sometimes the situation is very obvious. Hitler in Nazi Germany was very anti-Christ, as was Stalin. These people took the honor and glory reserved only for God. Each reflected the beast in some form, and Revelation is referring to these kind of people and oppressive governments. However, that is not the only story. Revelation 13:17 says, "no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark." We, in our Western culture, often sell ourselves to the consumer mentality. We desire more and more stuff and get addicted to buying and going into debt. How many people, Christians and otherwise, have huge credit card debt? How many foolishly borrow on cars, homes (with crazy sub-prime loans)? People who borrow become slaves to the lender. Perhaps the credit number is the mark of the beast for these people.

Looking for one person to be the 666 beast, either in the future, or in the past, is closing the eyes to the anti-Christs that are around us today. Anything that draws your heart away from fully serving Christ is a form of the anti-Christ. It can be blatant, like the Islamic countries that persecute and kill those who convert to Christianity. It can be much more subtle as not wanting to be thought of as an "intolerant" fundamentalist Christian. It can be allowing yourself to be enslaved to consumerism, debt, and not using your resources for advancing God's kingdom. As Revelation says, "Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus." (Revelation 14:12, ESV).

But also know this, if you are in Christ, you have been sealed by God. God's name is written on your forehead. You will be singing a new song before the throne of God that no one can learn except God's redeemed and elect. Because of that, you will heed the call to endure, not to enslave yourselves to the anti-Christ, in whatever form it takes, and keep the commandments of God and your faith in Jesus.

Revelation: Time, Times, and Half a Time

The most questions I had outside the Revelation class was how do I interpret time, times, and half a time, or 42 months, or 1,260 days.

The expressions show up in Revelation 12 in a couple of places:

• 1,260 days: Revelation 12:5-6 (ESV): "⁵ She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, ⁶ and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days."


• Time, times, and half a time: Revelation 12:12-14 (ESV): "¹³ And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. ¹⁴ But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time."

The Jewish year was reckoned as 360 days. If we assume “time” is one year, “times” is two years, and “half a time” if half a year, then we have the following equivalents:

• Time, times, and half a time = 3½ years.


• 1,260 days = 360 days/year x 3.5 years.


• 42 months = 12 months/yea x 3.5 years.

The significance of this usage of 1,260 days in Revelation 12:6 is that there is a clear starting time for this period. Revelation 12 speaks of a child that is born that is to rule the nations with an iron rod. This is clearly Christ. The child is caught up to heaven, which is a clear allusion to Christ’s ascension. So the 1,260 days start on Christ’s ascension.

This raises the question of whether 1,260 days is a literal duration of a period after Christ’s ascension, or is it figurative for another identifiable period in history? If the number is figurative, then the period itself does not need to have a literal duration of 3½ years.

There is nothing that stands out for 3½ years after Christ’s ascension that would make sense for this description in Revelation 12. It would seem that a wider period of time would fit. I would suggest that this period is the age between Christ’s ascension and his second coming. The reason is that fits well in the sequence in Revelation. Revelation 12:14 speaks about how the woman and her seed are both persecuted and comforted in the desert. The passage does not give an ending time for this in Revelation 12, but it looks to continue until the second coming of Christ in Revelation 14:14-20.

If we survey 3½ periods in the Bible we come up with some interesting associations.

The two witnesses of Revelation 11

(Revelation 11:1-3, ESV) Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, ² but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. ³ And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”

The Witnesses are, “the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.” Lampstands in Revelation 1 represent the churches. There are two of them because two is the number needed to testify in any legal matter.

The witnesses appear to be the church between the two advents of Christ. They witness for 1,260 days (3½ years) and then are killed and lay dead for 3½ days. The 3½ days appears be a period of intense suffering for the church.

During the 3½ years, the witnesses have “have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.”

The drought during Elijah (1 Kings 17-18)

Elijah shut the sky for 3 years. Elijah, along with God’s people, were both persecuted and protected during that period. Revelation makes a clear allusion to this time.

The Little Horn of Daniel 7

(Daniel 7:2-8, ESV) ² Daniel declared, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. ³ And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. … ⁷ After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. ⁸ I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.

(Daniel 7:23-25, ESV) ²³ “Thus he said: ‘As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. ²⁴ As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. ²⁵ He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.

Most interpreters view the Little Horn to be an Anti-Christ figure. This corresponds with Revelation 11 with the beast from the abyss, and also in Revelation 12 with the Dragon.

Conclusion

The 3½ years (time, times, and half a time), 42 months, and 1,260 days are equivalent expressions of the period of time from the ascension of Christ to his second coming. This is a time where God's people are both persecuted by God's enemies and protected, just as Elijah and those who followed God were both persecuted but also protected by God.

We live in an inaugurated eschatology, in the tension of the already but not yet. Christ rules and those who are in Christ will be victorious. But it comes through persecution, not compromising with the ungodly world, and most importantly, though Christ and his work on the cross where the Christian has her robes washed white in the blood of Christ.

Revelation: Sequencing

As you read through the book of Revelation you'll notice that there is a sequence of images. A fundamental question that needs to be asked and answered is this: Are these images in the vision chronologically ordered? In other words, does the trumpets sequence follow, time wise, after the seals sequence?

I must admit this was not an obvious question for me to ask. I had always assumed that all the visions and sequences where ordered sequentially in time. That is how Revelation was always presented to me since childhood. Further, I tend to view things in a linear sequence.

A few years ago, someone posed the question to me of whether the sequences in Revelation were time sequences. It was such a new idea that I responded how in the world could it be something else?

I was then introduced to the word, "recapitulation". Recapitulation is the idea that the sequences in Revelation do not necessarily follow each other in time sequence, but rather look at history again from another perspective. The seals in Revelation shows a sequence of disaster, culminating in the sixth and seventh seal which seems to be the final judgement. Then we have the seven trumpets, which comes after the prayers of the saints. But we see in the trumpets disaster again. In a linear view, the disasters of the trumpets follow chronologically after the seals. However, the trumpets may be looking at the same period of history as the seals, presenting it from a different angle. As one author has suggested, these sequences would be viewed as "overlays" in history, each overlay providing a piece of the total picture of what is happening in history.

When I understood what that one pastor suggested, I had one of those big "aha" moments. I could fit the majors pieces of Revelation together, as overlays, and the picture made sense for the first time in my life. Initially, recapitulation may seem counter-intuitive. It was initially counter-intuitive to me simply because I was never exposed to it before. But it turns out to be a powerful organizing principle.

John, the author of Revelation, was Jewish, and ancient. His mind, and the mind of his near-eastern contemporaries, did not think in linear sequences that we do today. Recapitulation may well fit much better to their pattern of thinking. It also captures the sense of Hebrew poetry, which was done in cycles. Often passages are restated with a form of parallelism, where the couplet could restate what each other says, or state the opposite of each other. This is a form of recapitulation, and revelation does this on a grand scale.

Revelation: The Big Picture

These are class notes for a series I am teaching on Revelation.

Many people find the book of Revelation to be confusing. One way to take away confusion is to look at the big picture of Revelation. Read or listen to Revelation in one sitting, start to finish. It takes about an hour to listen to the entire book. One good place to listen online or download audio files is AudioTreasure.

Listen Online	MP3 Download
Streaming KJV	Zipped MP3 KJV
Streaming World English Bible (WEB)	Zipped MP3 Chapters 1-11 (WEB), Zipped MP3 Chapters 12-22 (WEB)

What is the Big Picture? Reading Revelation reveals at least the following scheme:

(1) There is a heavenly vision of Christ.
(2) A letter to seven churches with particular exhortations to those churches.
(3) Lots of trouble, but God is active in preserving the saints. The saints may loose their lives, but they are ultimately protected.
(4) Final judgement.
(5) Final victory of Christ and his people.

Most everyone can see that general flow no matter how one approaches Revelation. Of course we can see more detail than that, just seeing a very big layout helps in starting to understand Revelation.

Another thing to notice is Revelation is full of images. In some passages the images are identified. in other passages the images are not explicitly identified. Revelation is written in symbolic form. Revelation gathers images from the Old Testament -- but modifies them, has numerous allusions to the New Testament, pulls images from Hebrew, Greek, and Roman culture -- but again modifies these.

Question: Is John reporting the symbols just as he is seeing them? Or is John looking into the future, seeing things that he has no idea of they are and describes them as best as he can? For instance, did John see in the future wave after wave of Apache attack helicopters, and since he did not know what they were, he described them as locusts?

The answer, I think, is that John is reporting the symbols just as he sees them. Locusts are actually locusts, not helicopters. Many symbols cannot be pictured as a literal thing. For instance:

(Revelation 11:8 NASB) And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.

Literally there is no city that is Egypt, Sodom, and where Christ was crucified. The symbol description gives a picture of this city. The Israelites, before the Exodus, were in bondage in Egypt. Egypt is a place of bondage. In the Old Testament, Sodom was a city of great evil. Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified, was the center of false religion. This word image paints a picture of where the dead bodies of the two witnesses (another symbol) will lay. The place is evil, enslaves its residents, and practices false religion.

Numbers show up. Numbers have symbolic importance. Seven indicates universality or completeness. The seven churches are literal seven churches in Revelation, but the number seven indicates the universality of the message to all the churches throughout the ages. Twelve is associated with the twelve apostles, the twelve tribes of Israel, twenty-four can indicate the entire span of history from Israel through the church. Look for sentence structures of threes, often indicating attributes of the Triune God.

Let the images percolate in you mind as you read them. Sometimes one symbol can refer to several related things. Revelation is a book for ruminating, playing the images over and over in your mind.