'Beast' stays home on 06/06/06
Events, marketing blitz make an appearance - but the Apocalypse is a no-show
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
BY CATHERINE O'DONNELL
News Staff Reporter Today, the world ends. Or so some might have us think.
Conspiracy and end-of-the-world theorists have pointed to today's date - 06/06/06 - as potentially catastrophic, based on interpretations of the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation.
And entertainment marketers are capitalizing on it - choosing today to release a remake of the 1976 movie "The Omen,'' as well as books and CDs and rock 'n' roll tours that link good-vs.-evil content to a distillation of today's date into the mark of "the beast.''
"666,'' in Revelation's expression of the end of the world, is the number marking the beast that will wreak havoc on the Earth. "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 threescore and six,'' the text reads (13:18).
Revelation also includes The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, but the beast seems to have garnered the most attention.
The big guessing game among religious fundamentalists has been the identity of the beast, said Phillip Munoa, a professor of religion at Hope College in Holland who obtained his doctorate from the University of Michigan.
Some people say the beast is evil incarnate and a specific being. Maybe it was Adolf Hitler because of the six letters in his name. Others have drawn connections between 666 and several Caesars (especially Nero) and popes, and even Osama bin Laden. There also has been a suggestion that modern bar codes are the mark. Others say it means humans will eventually have microchips implanted.
There is even a name for it. In Greek, 666 is hexakosioi hexekonta hex. So, fear of the number of the beast is hexakosioi hexekonta hexaphobia, just as triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13.
But Bible scholars and several area ministers advise against taking things too literally.
The beast is most likely the Roman Empire, and the Book of Revelation is most likely a coded text that warned Christians away from the state and the emperor, Munoa said. The "666'' is most likely code for Nero, as it is the numerical value of his name in Hebrew, and he was the Roman emperor who initiated the first large-scale persecution of Christians, at Rome in 64 A.D.