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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