Everyone loves a good mystery, especially if you belong to a Mystery Religion. Christians endlessly search for the identity of the beast(s) of the apocalyptic writing known as the "Revelation." In the past various opponents to Christianity, or anything Christians become attached to, has been associated by their "seers" with beast with the number of a man, the number 666. Neron Kaesar, the Roman leader; the Christian Roman Catholic pope; Napolean Bonaparte; Adolf Hitler...and now possibly the Internet's World Wide Web, has been equated with the beast and his schemes to rule mankind. But who or what is the beast-man 666? How can we get a reasonable idea of a solution to this mystery? And why will Christians most likely never acknowledge who is actually 666?

This is certainly not a commentary on the "Revelation" but it will be necessary to bring out some facts concerning it. First of all, it is not a "Christian" book, even though it is found in the Christian bible (which after all includes the Bible ---the Tanak---to which Christians have added various books over several centuries which they collectively refer to as the "New Testament"). Revelation is a Jewish book, in this case written by a Jew who also followed Yahshua ben Yosef. He was what Christian scholars (incorrectly) call a "Jewish-Christian" and even had a Hebrew name "Yahhannan" or John in the modern inaccurate version. This was in a day when gentiles did not take Hebrew names, and more often, Jews took gentile names to fit in the gentile world, just as they do today. The communities described in the book are symbolized by m'norot, that is, seven branched lampstands like those to be found in the Beyt Hammiqdash (the Temple). And there are more, many more Judaic elements in Revelation. One cannot ever hope to understand Revelation without understanding the Jewish writer and Jewish messianic communities he was writing to and warning against the man who would begin persecution of Yahshua's brethren and followers---by someone who claimed to represent him. A liar, a traitor. This persecution has  never stopped to this very day. But this study will try to limit itself to the subject of our title.

It seems that many new things, especially those involving "non-human" technology scare those who are somewhat ignorant and suspicious of anything outside their own carefully constructed culture. We can remember not long ago when bar-codes were proclaimed to be part of the "beast system" and before that social security numbers were seen to be part of a devilish plan of subjugation. Most recent to this list of demonic devices is the Internet. This is based on a decoding of the acronym, www featured as part of an URL, the uniform resource location, that is, the address of a computer serving information across a world wide network of computers. And this is based on an ancient code system called gematria.

According to the recent theory, World Wide Web, that is www, stands for 666. They correctly refer to the fact that the Semitic equivalent to the English language's 'w' is the Hebrew character 'waw'. And as each character of the Hebrew alef-bet (alphabet, if you will) can also double as a numeral, waw does have a number value of 6 as it is the sixth character of the alef-bet. To someone who does not understand gematria or Hebrew numbering conventions, www, or we should say, waw-waw-waw, would appear to be the number 666. But this is not the case at all. Once numbering goes past 20, it jumps for each letter. Also, in gematria, the characters are added up to get a number. Let us demonstrate:
 
 

And not only this, but letter-numbers are added in descending order by larger to smaller amount. So it is not always easy to construct a number to where the symbolism shows easily. Usually a name is started with first (that is characters) and then interpreted thru numbers.  In other words, www, or 6+6+6 does not add to six-hundred-sixty-six. It adds up to 18. In Hebrew, 18 is the exact same as hay, meaning "life."

On the other hand, what letter-numbers are required to equal 666 exactly, and in the proper configuration? Consult the chart above finding the largest number needed first, then the second largest, and so on, in descending order.

You will find that the letters in order are: Taw-Resh-Samek-Waw. In English characters we would represent them as Trsw. But Hebrew is represented by consonants only. Vowels came much later, except for the yod and waw. Waw could act as a long 'o' or 'u'. Trsw---is that a Hebrew word? No, it is a Hebrew spelling or a word-play on the name of a Greek city in Asia Minor. It was this city that the beast-666 came from, the city of Tarsus, the city where Paul, the teacher of lawlessness and apostate founder of gentile Christianity came from. Paul of Tarsus is the beast-666 of the Revelation.
 

Next: Part II, Paul of Tarsus, the beast of Revelation.