In the Revelation of St. John (xiii. 18) we read: —

“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 three score and six.” (Some ancient authorities read 616 instead of 666.)

Scientific commentators are probably this time agreed that the name to be “counted” must be found by “gematria,” i.e. we must look for a name the letters of which, taken separately in their ordinary values as numerals and added together, will make of the sum of 666 or 616. Now it has been generally assumed by exegetists hitherto that gematria was a specifically Jewish form of the numerical riddle, and therefore attempts have often been made, especially in recent times, to solve the number 666 or 616 by means of the Hebrew alphabet. As a matter of fact, however, the interchange of numbers for words and words for numbers was not unknown to the ancient Greeks, as even Greek lexicons tell us. The patristic writers, in so far as they attempted to solve the riddle with the Greek alphabet, show that such numerical puzzles were not entirely foreign to the Greek world. From Pompeii, however, we learn that they were current among the people at the very time the New Testament was being written. A. Sogliano has published graffiti (wall-scribblings) from Pompeii, i.e. not later in date than 79 A.D., one example of which is as follows: —

“Amerimnus thought upon his lady Harmonia for good. The number of her honourable name is 45 (or 1035).”

Another example reads: —

“I love her whose number is 545.”

These graffiti, in date not far removed from the Revelation of St. John, certainly suggest new riddles, but they also establish, besides those already pointed out, the following facts: —

(1) They are concerned with names of persons, which names for some reason or other are to be concealed.

(2) The name was concealed by resolving it into a number. In all probability single letters were given their usual values as numerals and then added together.

(3) The similar numerical riddle in the Revelation would not necessarily seem Semitic, i.e. foreign, to the men of the Greek-speaking world. Examples of such playing with numbers have been found on inscribed stones of the Imperial period at Pergamum, which was one of the cities of the Apocalypse (Rev. ii. 12 ff.). Franz Bucheler has convincingly proved how widespread the habit was at that time, and a passage in Suetonius (Nero, 39), hitherto obscured by false conjectures, has been cleared up by his brilliant discover that the name “Nero” is there resolved numerically into “matricide.”

(4) In solving the apocalyptic numbers 616 and 666, occurring in the Greek book, it is not only not unfeasible to start from the Greek alphabet, but it is in fact the most obvious thing to do.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, 276-278.