Here are a few of my speculations. Does anyone have knowledge to confirm them or suggest an alternative; Is it Greek idiom to say something like τρὶς ἕξ? Would that mean 6-6-6 or 18?
Following from what Stephen said, if someone were to say a number
made up of three parts - ὁ
τριπλοῦς ἀριθμὸς χξϚ' - I think that would be of 600, 60 and 6. If it were written in the Latin system as DCLXVI, would it be said to be composed of 6 parts or 3?
I would like to know the idiomatic way to say "six", "six", "six", not for particular interest, but to be able to have not only the negative (non-Indian system) way of understanding, but also the positive (this is how it would be said) way of expressing it too, for completeness.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:I will point out that the majority of the manuscripts have the words, not the numerals, so it's really kind of irrelevant.
Even though TR does write it in numerals, I think that the interpretation of the Greek numerals to arrive at 666 is flawed. The Greek numerals are the numeral "600", the numeral "60" and the numeral "6". Besides, our English way is almost the same six hundred and six-ty (=ten) six. It seems to be only a graphical problem of meaninglessly separating digits.
Additionally, In Chinese culture, the digits read separately 六六六 liu-liu-liu (cf. 流流流) is a lucky sequence of numbers - but the Greek is not the sequence, but the value, so 666 六百六十六 as truly represented in the Bible (as opposed to some popular misrepresentations in western culture) is not an affront to Chinese people, or their culture and values.