Forward and Reverse Gematria are Very Different Beasts

Abstract

Though a relatively quiet minority, some commentators since the eighth-century Bede have suggested that the notorious “666” of Revelation 13:18 alludes to the measurement of King Solomon’s excessive gold accumulation which immediately precedes his idolatrous downfall in the Biblical narrative. We now bolster that hypothesis with the observation that the letters of Solomon’s (New Testament Greek) name add up to 1,260, thereby linking this passage with the repeated references to “1,260 days” and related time durations in the preceding sections of the Apocalypse. We go on to adduce a diverse array of reasons to confirm Solomon as the intended solution over against competing candidates such as Nero Caesar and against other types of interpretations such as the purely symbolic. This approach to John’s “calculate the number” riddle – intertextuality feeding into forward gematria feeding into further intertextuality – has hermeneutical, exegetical, spiritual, canonical, geometrical, logical, and aesthetic advantages over popular reverse gematria attempts to search for a (generally extra-Biblical) name producing the value 666.