A fragment of the original Book of Revelation, written in Greek and dating back to the third century, has been deciphered using a revolutionary technique (SN reported) and has found that the number of the beast is not 666 but is in fact 616.
Refering to the writing, Professor David Parker, of the University of Birmingham says "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names."
"Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula." he added. The number 666 is often refered to in sermons by fundamentalist Christians concerning the apocalypse.
SOURCE:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/thi...p?story=634679 
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