From: Ben Crick (ben.crick@argonet.co.uk)
Date: Wed Dec 15 1999 - 13:22:49 EST
On Wed 15 Dec 1999 (11:54:14), crhutson@salisbury.net wrote:
> I think that "stigma" is not a typo. This is the number 6, isn't it?
> "Sigma" would be 200.
Dear CRIS
Correct. Antichrist is "stigmatised" as 666. Stigma is the same as Digamma
or W (written as F). Greek uses a decimal system; but has no symbol for
zero (0). So they need nine letters for the units; nine more for the tens;
nine more for the hundreds. This makes 27: but there are only 24 letters
in the Greek alphabet, so three obsolete letters are pressed into service:
TABLE OF NUMERICAL VALUES OF GREEK LETTERS
1 alpha 10 iota 100 rho
2 beta 20 kappa 200 sigma
3 gamma 30 lambda 300 tau
4 delta 40 mu 400 upsilon
5 epsilon 50 nu 500 phi
6 [digamma/stigma] 60 xi 600 chi
7 zeta 70 omicron 700 psi
8 eta 80 pi 800 omega
9 theta 90 [qoppa] 900 [sampi]
Some prophets of doom want to characterise the "World Wide Web" as 666
"www"; but that is not how it works! From the table above, you can see
that 666 is chi xi digamma (stigma), not www.
ERRWSQE
Ben
-- Revd Ben Crick, BA CF <ben.crick@argonet.co.uk> 232 Canterbury Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9TD (UK) http://www.cnetwork.co.uk/crick.htm--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
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