Hi Jaydam,
I cannot see any justification for Nero being the "beast" or "antichrist".
One might ask whether an image of Nero was ever given breath so that it spoke, and whether any “beast” who supported Nero had everyone killed who would not worship his image—an image which both breathed and spoke. (Rev 13:15)
One might also ask whether there was a time in Nero's reign where people couldn't buy of sell unless they has a mark on their right hand or forehead (not Nero's image on the coins, as some claim). (Rev 13:17)
The supposed justification concerning the number of the beast as it is applied to Nero, is faulty.
First, consider what language John, the writer of Revelation, was using in writing that book. Clearly it was Greek.
The Greeks used the letters in their alphabet to represent numbers. I have a copy of the manuscript Papyrus 66, which contains most of John's gospel, and is believed to have been written about 150 A.D. The page numbers of the manuscript are given in Greek numerical characters that represent numbers as follows (These early documents were written all in upper-case characters); they looked a bit like this:
1 Α alpha
2 Β beta
3 Γ gamma
4 Δ delta
5 Ε epsilon
7 Ζ zeta
8 Η eta
9 Θ theta
10 Ι iota
20 Κ kappa
30 Λ lamda
40 Μ mu
50 Ν nu
60 Ξ xi
70 Ο omicron
80 Π pi
100 Ρ rho
200 Σ sigma
300 Τ tau
400 Υ upsilon
500 Φ phi
600 Χ chi
700 Ψ psi
800 Ω omega
You might wonder why 6, 90, and 900 are missing. These numbers were represented by characters outside the alphabet as follows:
6 ϝ digamma (later became C stigma)
90 ϟ qoppa
900 ϡ sampi
The earliest extant manuscript of Rev 13:18 is papyrus 113 dated in the third century (the 200s). I have a photo copy of the portion of the manuscript giving the number of the beast as XIC (616). Now I know that Irenæus writes in Against Heresies, Book 5, Chapter 30, that 616 is the incorrect number and that it was probably a copyist's error. That well may be. But the point I am making is not that the number should be 616 as in the earliest extant manuscript, but that whichever is correct WAS WRITTEN IN REVELATION as a number in Greek characters. Some manuscripts have 666, and it is written as XΞC (chi,xi,stigma).
John the writer of Revelation wrote numbers in the Greek way using Greek letters or symbols. He did not use any other language to write them.
Some try to figure out the name with the number 666, by doing it in English—working out a system where a=1, b=2, c=3, etc. But why would John have predicted the name with an English system centuries before the English language existed? But preterists claim the Nero's name is 666 when calculated in the Hebrew letter-numeric system. The Hebrew system existed in the days of John, but a similar question can be asked, Why would the name be calculated in Hebrew when John himself used the Greek system to express numbers? Irenæus suggested names whose number was 666 in the Greek system, and he clearly expected the “beast” whom he called “antichrist” to appear at a time future to his own time. Here are the names he suggested:
1 EYANΘAΣ (Euanthas). But Eusebius had nothing to say about this name. From the chart of Greek numerics we can see that this name works.
----E 005
----Y 400
----A 001
----N 050
----Θ 009
----A 001
----Σ 200
Total 666
2 ΛATEINOΣ (Lateinos—The Latin Man). Eusebius wrote that this is a very probable solution, being the name of the last kingdom of the four seen in the vision of Daniel, as well as the fact that the Latins were ruling in the days in which Eusebius was writing.
----Λ 030
----A 001
----T 300
----E 005
----I 010
----N 050
----O 070
----Σ 200
Total 666
3 TEITAN (Teitan). Eusebius felt that this name was rather worthy of credit. He said that this was an ancient name, but that there were no kings in his day with this name, nor idols worshipped bearing this name. However, he said that this name was considered divine, and that the Romans called the sun by this name, and that it is a name belonging to a tyrant.
And now. How do some assign 666 to Nero's name? “Nero” is a Latin name, and although numbers were written in Latin characters as “Roman Numerals”, they were limited to I, V, X, L, C, D, and M. So the Latin name “Nero” would have no numerical value in Latin.
The Greek spelling of the name is “ΝΕΡΩΝ” (NERON). The Greek numerical value of this name is 1005.
So how do Preterists and others obtain the value of 666?
First they take the GREEK name “ΝΕΡΩΝ” and put it together with the GREEK word for “Caesar” which is “ΚΑΙΣΑΡ”. Of course the total Greek numerical value will not do, since it will be greater than 1005. So they transliterate these GREEK words into Hebrew. Now Hebrew has no vowels. So they remove the vowels from
“ΝΕΡΩΝ” to get “NPN” (or “NRN” in Latin charcers). Then they remove the vowels from “ΚΑΙΣΑΡ” and so one would expect them to get “ΚΣΡ” (“KSR” in Latin characters). But no! Instead of using the latin “K”, they select a somewhat similar sounding Latin character “Q”! Why do they choose “Q” instead of “K”? Well, the HEBREW numerical value “NRN KSR” doesn't add up to 666, but the Hebrew numerical value of ““NRN QSR” does! The Hebrew letter for “K” is either “Khof” or “Kas”. But neither will work to produce “666”. However, the Hebrew letter for “Q”, namely “Qof” does work.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ebrewc.gif
We might ask ourselves:
1. Why should the number of the beast's name be calculated with Hebrew numeric characters? After all John, the author of Revelation, used Greek characters to express “666” itself!
2. Doesn't the method used to calculate the number of “Nero Cæsar” using Hebrew characters seem rather contrived?
3. Cannot a similar method be used to calculate the number of almost ANY name to be 666?