Monday, June 05, 2006

June 6: A beastly day?

Lots of mindless tittle-tattle on the Internet concerning the date tomorrow — 6/6/06. Ooooh! Isn't that the Number of the Beast, according to Revelation 13:18? What if something happens?

Fear not. The number of the beast is not 666 ("six six six"), it's six hundred and sixty-six. There's nothing ominous about the number 6 three times in a row; that's just the way we write that particular number in Western arithmetic. Is there anything scary about DCLXVI (= six hundred sixty-six in Roman numerals)?

Plus, it's not completely clear that 666 is the original number of the beast (see here), although it probably is.

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