Ancient Greek letters had a numerical designation Rome knew it; where can I find information on the system.?

Question

I am looking into Biblical text and the number 666. It may be the number of the Prophetic "beast" but it is also the name of a person [using the Greek system of lettering]. The Greeks had reduced letter to numeric magnitude and assigned a value to each alphabetic character.

Answer 1

What you're talking about is called gematria, assigning numeric value to letters to reveal hidden meanings and relationships thru the summation of the letters in keywords found in sacred texts. The system the Greeks used was taken from the same ssytem the Hebrews used many years before. The first 9 letters of the alphabet are assigned 1-9 respectively; the following 10 numbers assigned values 10-100 in multiples of 10;the next ten letters assinged values 200-900 in multiples of 100; and so on for the rest of the alphabet. If you're question is that you want to know to whom 666 refers to, then there are tons of theories out there, all of which are valid, since the system of gematria is not an exact science and can easily be manipulated to suit the needs of the translator. Some interesting theories on the identity of 666 comes from the different alphabets: the Hebrew translation turns 666 into "Nero Caesar", the Greek translation comes up with "Allah", and the Latin translation becomes "Martin Luthera". However, throughout history the number of the Beast has been associated with various emperors, world leaders, religious figures, even technological trends, so one translation of 666 is as correct as any other. I'm sorry this answer was so long, but I hope that this information was helpful.