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Transliteration is a form of language translation in which each alphabetic character is substituted for the corresponding character in another alphabet. The stamped image of the Beast, whose name is a number, 666, his forehead and right hand, could possibly be the Nero Aureus a gold coin minted during the reign of Roman Emperor Caesar Nero
I mention this because many examples of the coin still exist, and Nero’s profile is on one side, and on the obverse, he is depicted with right hand extended and holding a patera, a shallow drinking vessel that symbolized divinity in ancient Rome!
On the front of the coin are the words concatenated: NEROCAESAR which, when transliterated from Greek into Hebrew, and by summing the numerical assignments for the Hebrew characters, produces the sum 666 That information is in the footnotes of the NAB 1972 version.
More recently, the oldest New Testament Bible fragment in existence was discovered, and the name of the Beast is specified as 616 When NEROCAESAR is transliterated from Latin into Hebrew, summing the numerical assignments of the Hebrew characters produces the sum 616 It appears 666 and 616 are the same name
Contrary to popular belief, the Holy Bible existed first in Latin, because Constantine The Great ordered that the world to be searched for any manuscripts inspired from the One True God, and he spoke Latin. So, after the world had been searched by a team of 50,000 people, the manuscripts they deemed worthy, and therefore transcribed, so as to leave the originals with their owners, were translated into Latin by Roman Catholic Saint, Jerome
It was only much later that an attempt was made to translate the Latin Vulgate back into Greek. Believe it or not, the birth, life and crucifixion of Christ did not rank very high in historical importance of the time. There only ever were a few thousand copies of the Gospels in Greek, none of which survive today.
In ancient Rome it was illegal to transact commerce is local currencies. So, unless one accepted a stamped image of the Beast’s forehead and right hand—Roman currency: the Nero Aureus—they could not buy and/or sell
It is possible that there is some other person whose name somehow corresponds to both 666 and 616, who is yet to appear. But I think it’s much more likely the Beast was Roman Emperor Caesar Nero. Between 348 A.D. and 1348 A.D. there was a thousand years of peace between God and mankind. In 1348, the Black Death wiped out most of Western Europe
The Beast rose again for a short time, denying Christ to millions during the 1500s. Then he died, but his legacy lives on. However, I could be totally wrong.
