Dogface, the Apocalypse was written in Greek. As you know, Greek writing did not use Roman numerals, so your Roman figurings are a bit irrelevant to the discussion. In Grecian numeric notation, 666 would be [symbol]CX[/symbol]F.
The vaguely Islamic-sounding conception of “seventh heaven” is sort of loosely based on the cosmology of Qur’ân verses like khalaqa sab‘ samâwât ‘He created seven heavens’. However, Muslim philosophers like Avicenna considered God to be beyond the seven cosmic levels, in the Empyrean. This cosmology predated Islam, of course. I have not found the actual phrase “seventh heaven” used as such in Islamic literature, at least not in the metaphorical sense used in English.
The story of the Prophet’s Night Journey and Mi‘râj (ascent) tells of his ascent through the seven heavens and beyond them to the Divine Throne. The Spanish scholar Miguel Asín Palacios identified this theme in Andalusian Sufi literature as a source for Dante’s Divine Comedy.
For divinely special numbers, I nominate 13. Consider this astounding fact:
"ELEVEN PLUS TWO" is an anagram of “TWELVE PLUS ONE.”
I’ve seen references that it also refers to the six directions in space (Above, Below, Left, Right, Before, Behind) plus the Center, and is thus a metaphor for completeness for that reason.
Although many previous threads have treated the topic of the number 666 as given as “the number of the beast” in Revelation 13:18, here goes.
The Roman Emperor Nero, famous for persecuting Christians, is most often cited as the candidate for the beast. Why? The Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans all used letters of their alphabets to signify numbers. Every letter of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets was assigned a number. If Nero’s name is written in its Greek form Neron (the Book of Revelation was written in Greek), and if the title Caesar is added to get Neron Caesar, and if the result is written in Hebrew letters, the total numerical value of the letters is 666.
However, Nero had been dead a quarter of a century when Revelation is estimated to have been written (A.D. 95-100), so perhaps the warning about “the beast” does not refer to him.
The OP and many other questions about numerical symbolism could be answered by looking into Annemarie Schimmel’s book The Mystery of Numbers. Seriously. The late Dr. Schimmel was a consummate scholar who compiled a wealth of metaphysics and folklore from many traditions into this book. Under each number is a detailed article giving all the religious significances that have been atttributed to it. Unfortunately, my copy of the book was stolen in the mail before it even reached me from Oxford University Press, so I can’t refer to it right now. But if you’re interested in this type of question, it’s definitely the reference book to have.
It was widely believed at the end of the first century that the Emperor Domitian was a reincarnation of Nero (or alternately, Nero in disguise). Hence, the language about the Beast appearing to suffer a mortal wound and then reemerging later. The “Beast” was Domitian/Nero perceived as the same person.
Did you mean “ΧΞΦ” or “ΧΞF”? That is, is the final character meant to be a phi or a digamma?
And in any case, how could any thing be any more “irrelevant” to this thread than anything else? Claims that a number is “three times incomplete” or three incompletes in a row are equally as invalid if applied to Greek enumeration schemes.
It might be remembered that the ancient ‘pagans’ who split up into the numerous factions of so-called religions were consummate star-gazers. From where they stood in, say, 300 B.C., without benefit of Mount Palomar telescopes, they only counted seven planets. Seven – the whole of creation.
<< There were six days of creation. On the seventh day, God rested. >>
Sigh. Yeah, but the whole of creation was not complete without the day of rest. Hence, seven days of creation. Or, if you’d prefer, on the seventh day, God created rest (the sabbath.)
Seven planets? First that the ancients assumed that those travelling stars were planets, like earth. They didn’t. Second, the only planets visible to the naked eye are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. That’s five. Uranus was disocvered in 1781, Neptune was discovered in 1846, and Pluto was discovered in 1930.
