Well, the day of reckoning is here. Stock up on canned goods. Fill the bath tub with water. The Number of the Beast
TM is here, June 6, 2006, or 6/6/6. AHHHH!
Only problem is, it's not the number of the beast of the Bible, and the reason people think it's so is a great example of the problems of Biblical literalism.
First, a quick aside: we all know the political and social phenomenon of Biblical literalism. Those folks who quote Bible verse as literal truth, unsullied by human hands. Unfortunately, that's not the truth. The original texts of the canonical New Testament are the Gospel "according to" Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as various letters to Corinthians, Romans, and others. Unlike the Koran, which purports to be the direct words of God transcribed onto paper, the Bible has always been filtered through human hands.
And we all know the fallibility of human hands.
Revelations is perhaps the one book of the New Testament most plumbed for prophecy and truth because it is the Apocalyptic prophecy, a mystical blend of symbolism and narrative. And, as well all know, buried in its description of The Beast, the Antichrist who will bring about the Apocalypse (leaving the dead strewn on city streets, if you like to play Dominionist video games), is the passage (King James version):
Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six
So there it is, the number of the beast, the date today and the staple of millions and millions of numerological theories.
And, which I find hilarious, it's dead wrong. The number of the beast in the Bible is actually 616.
Here's an article from earlier this year
A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.[...]
The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.
Where more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the "number of the beast," or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book's apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.[...]
But Dr. Aitken said that [later] translation [which used 666] was drawn from much later versions of the New Testament than the fragment found in Oxyrhynchus. "When we're talking about the early biblical texts, we're always talking about copies and they are copies made, at best, 150 to 200 years after [the original] was written," she said.
"They can have mistakes in the copying, changes for political or theological reasons ... it's like a detective story piecing it all together."
In fact, the current scholarship is that the entire Book of Revelations was a political tract about the situation at the time of its writing, with the number of the beast a simple mathematical riddle of someone's name (probably Nero). The book is elliptical as an obvious protection from political persecution.
With the debate (much of it surprisingly substantive) spurred by the Da Vinci Code about the origin of the canonical Bible, this is yet another, easily understood example of the historical truth of the New Testament: it's a document written, translated, and edited by humans. There are moments of profound moral truths and beautiful examples of humanity and universal rights. But there are also outdated strictures detailing things for a society that has long faded away.
It's somehow fitting that the debate over homosexuality and moralism is taking place in the Senate on the day of the most obvious and clear Biblical mistake in our popular culture. The words about homosexuality in the Bible are destined to be as outdated as the ones warning against the evils of shellfish, or fabric blends (no lycra/cotton workout tops for you!).
So, as you hear all about "666" today, chuckle a little, think about the fact that the true "number of the beast" passed without incident last week, and remember the inherent fallibility of man ...