Sounds More Like an Area Code Than Something To Be Afraid Of

Today's date is 06/06/06. Frightened? Thinking about the end of times?

Well, maybe you shouldn't be.

Hearken back to this post by Rick Lugari a little over a year (and several blogs) ago:

The Beastly 666 may really be 616
HT to Sr. Lorraine for this story from The Independant

A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

I am really hoping that the Beast’s number isn't 616. The economic crisis created by such a revelation (no pun intended, but enjoyed anyway) would destroy society as we know it. Just think of all of the “end-times” books and movies that would have to be fixed. Reprinting all of those Left Behind books would be bad enough, but can you imagine the painstaking processes of rounding up all of the Jack Chick tracts from airports, public restrooms, and KKK meeting places?

Let’s say that, even if there is enough wood left in the Amazon forests to replace all of those books, we still might be able to recover from such a drain on the economy. Now consider the real problem; the movies. Movies play at 24 frames per second. Imagine the daunting task of going through hours upon hours of footage from Protestant end-times movies; going frame by frame scratching out the 666 from all of the Catholic’s foreheads, then having to write in 616 with a Sharpie!

What about all of those numeric codes? I remember when I was in high school, President Ronald Wilson Reagan was alleged to be the Antichrist because his three names each contained 6 letters. Oddly enough, the same type of code was devised to point the finger at JPII as well, but I forgot the formula. So, what happens now? Should we still consider him the Antchrist? Is this discovery actually an affirmation of the identity of the Antichrist, because 616 still fits (Ronald W. Reagan), therefore it must be Divine Providence? These questions require too much knowledge for me to answer. I guess I’ll just have to watch Jack van Impe and his ‘lovely wife Roxella’, to see what to think about this.

To which I responded:

The number "666" made sense. In Hebrew numerology, "7" is a divine or perfect number, which means "6" doesn't quite measure up. So, "666" must really be bad.

But what the hell does "616" mean? That's more like an area code or something.

Here's a similar story from today's Independent.

And some more details from the blog of a computer science professor at the University of Georgia.