On-line image of P.Oxy. LVI 4499
Ben Crick
ben.crick at argonet.co.uk
Wed Dec 15 13:22:49 EST 1999
On Wed 15 Dec 1999 (11:54:14), crhutson at salisbury.net wrote:
> I think that "stigma" is not a typo. This is the number 6, isn't it?
> "Sigma" would be 200.
Dear CRIS
Correct. Antichrist is "stigmatised" as 666. Stigma is the same as Digamma
or W (written as F). Greek uses a decimal system; but has no symbol for
zero (0). So they need nine letters for the units; nine more for the tens;
nine more for the hundreds. This makes 27: but there are only 24 letters
in the Greek alphabet, so three obsolete letters are pressed into service:
TABLE OF NUMERICAL VALUES OF GREEK LETTERS
1 alpha 10 iota 100 rho
2 beta 20 kappa 200 sigma
3 gamma 30 lambda 300 tau
4 delta 40 mu 400 upsilon
5 epsilon 50 nu 500 phi
6 [digamma/stigma] 60 xi 600 chi
7 zeta 70 omicron 700 psi
8 eta 80 pi 800 omega
9 theta 90 [qoppa] 900 [sampi]
Some prophets of doom want to characterise the "World Wide Web" as 666
"www"; but that is not how it works! From the table above, you can see
that 666 is chi xi digamma (stigma), not www.
ERRWSQE
Ben
--
Revd Ben Crick, BA CF
<ben.crick at argonet.co.uk>
232 Canterbury Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9TD (UK)
http://www.cnetwork.co.uk/crick.htm
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