"666"
- and -
HISTORICAL
MATERIALISM
In this section are posted
large, verbatim segments of Friedrich Engles' 1894 writing "On the History
of Early Christianity" in which the author draws parallels between the
early Christian religious movement and the communist system envisioned by Karl
Marx (1818-1883) and Engles (1820-95). Of special interest to occultists is
Engles' interpretation of that mysterious NUMBER 666.
Marx was the great economist and
social scientist, the motivating genius (by Engle's own account) of the pair.
Tied as he was to 19th Century terminology and semantic forms of expression,
Marx's entire works can often be difficult to fully read and grasp. Engles, on
the other hand, tended to write about cultural concerns in a style more
accessible (if less comprehensive than Marx's) to the modern reader.
Of
special interest is Engles' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and
the State, and Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850.)
In the
first part of "On the History of Early Christianity," Engles points
out how Christianity, "first appeared as the religion of slaves and
emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples
subjugated or dispersed by Rome." He goes on to illustrate the similarity
between the professed egalitarian outlook of socialism and early Christianity,
and also points to their vastly different material goals: "Only this
Christianity, as was bound to be the case in the historic conditions, did not
want to accomplish the social transformation in this world, but beyond it, in
heaven, in eternal life after death, in the impending 'millennium.'"
Further
on, in a humorous turn, Engles parallels the economic plight of the 1860's
International Workingmen's Association with that of the early Church: "The
whole epistle, (Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians--ed.) from Chapter
Eight onwards, echoes the eternal and oh! so well known complaint: "Les
cotisations ne rentrent pas." [Contributions are not coming in!"]
Continuing,
the author equates early Christian opportunists with opportunists in the labor
movement. In both respects the people in question characteristically support
ostensibly liberal movements out of personal connivance, with the ultimate goal
being self-aggrandizement. Obviously this continues today in both the religious
and secular areas of concern.
Later,
Engles reveals his own idealism, overrating the actual progress and prospects
of the labor movement at the time of his writing. He did not foresee what a
devastating effect such opportunistic forces as the capitulation of Social
Democracy leading to World War I, and later Stalinism, would have on the
international socialist movement.
Closer
to the core of our interest with "666," Engles states: "Not
Galilee and Jerusalem, but Alexandria and Rome...are the birth places of the
new religion"--(i.e., Christianity-ed.)
Now to
quote directly from the text:
...But
we have in the New Testament a single book the time of the writing of which can
be defined within a few months, which must have been between June 67 [Common
Era--.ed] and January or April 68; a book, consequently, which belongs to the
very beginning of the Christian era and reflects with the most naive fidelity
and in the corresponding idiomatic language the ideas of the beginning of that
era. This book, therefore, in my opinion, is a far more important source from
which to define what early Christianity really was than all the rest of the New
Testament, which, in its present form, is of a far later date. This book is the
so-called Revelation of John. And as this, apparently the most obscure book in
the whole Bible, is moreover today, thanks to German criticism [of the
early-middle 19th Century--.ed], the most comprehensible and the clearest, I
shall give my readers an account of it.
One
needs but to look into this book in order to be convinced of the state of great
exaltation not only of the author but also of the "surrounding
medium" in which he moved. Our Revelation is not the only one of its kind
and time. From the year 164 before our era, when the first which has reached
us, the so-called Book of Daniel, was written, up to about 250 of our era, the
approximate date of Commodian's Carmen, Renan [French historian who made
the remark re: "contributions" above--.ed] counted no fewer than
fifteen extant classical Apocalypses, not counting subsequent imitations...That
was a time 
when
even in Rome and Greece and still more in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt an
absolutely uncritical mixture of the crassest superstitions of the most varying
peoples was indiscriminately accepted and complemented by pious deception and
downright charlatanism; a time in which miracles, ecstasies, visions,
apparitions, divining, gold-making, cabala, and other secret magic played a
primary role. It was in that atmosphere, and, moreover, among a class of people
who were more inclined than any other to listen to these supernatural
fantasies, that Christianity arose. For did not the Christian Gnostics in Egypt
during the second century of our era engage extensively in alchemy and
introduce alchemistic notions into their teachings, as the Leyden papyrus
documents, among others, prove? And the Chaldean and Judean mathematici,
who, according to Tacitus, were twice expelled from Rome for magic, once under
Claudius and again under Vitellius, practiced no other kind of geometry than
the kind we shall find at the basis of John's Revelation.
To this
we must add another thing. All the Apocalypses attribute to themselves the
right to deceive their readers. Not only were they written as a rule by quite
different people than their alleged authors, and mostly by people who lived much
later, for example the Book of Daniel, the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypses of
Ezra, Baruch, Judah, etc., and the Sibylline Books, but, as far as their main
content is concerned, they prophesy only things that had already happened long
before and were quite well known to the real author. Thus in the year 164,
shortly before the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, the author of the Book of
Daniel makes Daniel, who is supposed to have lived in the time of
Nebuchadnezzar, prophesy the rise and fall of the Persian and Macedonian
empires and the beginning of the Roman Empire, in order by this proof of his
gift of prophecy to prepare the reader to accept the final prophecy that the
people of Israel will overcome all hardships and finally be victorious. If,
therefore, John's Revelation were really the work of its alleged author it
would be the only exception among all the apocalyptic literature.
The John
who claims to be the author was, in any case, a man of great distinction among
the Christians of Asia Minor. This is borne out by the tone of the message to
the Seven Churches. Possibly he was the apostle John, whose historical
existence, however, is not completely authenticated but is very probable. If
this apostle was really the author, so much the better for our point of view.
That would be the best confirmation that the Christianity of this book is real,
genuine early Christianity. Let it be noted...apparently, the same author as
the Gospel or the three Epistles, which are also attributed to John, did not
write the Revelation.
The
Revelation consists of a series of visions. In the first, Christ appears in the
garb of a high priest, goes in the midst of seven candlesticks representing the
Seven Churches of Asia and dictates to "John" messages to the seven
"angels" of those churches. Here at the very beginning we see the
difference between this Christianity and Constantine's universal
religion, formulated by the Council of Nicaea. The Trinity is not only unknown,
it is even impossible. Instead of the one Holy Ghost of later we have
here the "seven spirits of God," construed by the rabbis from
Isaiah 11:2. Christ is the son of God, the first and the last, the alpha and
the omega, by no means God himself or equal to God, but, on the contrary,
"the beginning and the creation of God," hence an emanation of
God, existing from all eternity but subordinate to God, like the
above-mentioned seven spirits. In Chapter 15:3 the martyrs in heaven sing
"the song of Moses, 
the
servant of God, and the song of the Lamb," glorifying God. Hence Christ
here appears not only as a subordinate to God but even, in a certain respect,
on an equal footing with Moses. Christ is crucified in Jerusalem (11:8) but
rises again (1:5, 18); he is "the Lamb" that has been sacrificed for
the sins of the world and with whose blood the faithful of all tongues and
nations have been redeemed to God. Here we find the basic idea, which enabled
Christianity to develop into a universal religion. All Semitic and European
religions of that time shared the view that the gods offended by the actions of
man could be propitiated by sacrifice; the first revolutionary basic idea
(borrowed from the Philonic school) in Christianity was that by the one great
voluntary sacrifice of a mediator the sins of all times and all men was atoned
for once for all--in respect of the faithful. Thus the necessity for any
further sacrifices was removed and with it the basis for a multitude of
religious rites, but freedom from rites that made difficult or forbad
intercourse with people of other confessions was the first condition of a
universal religion. In spite of this the habit of sacrifice was so deeply
rooted in the customs of peoples that Catholicism--which borrowed so much from
paganism--found it appropriate to accommodate itself to this fact by the
introduction of at least the symbolical sacrifice of the mass. On the other
hand, there is no trace whatever of the dogma of original sin.
But the
most characteristic in these messages. is that it never and nowhere occurs to
the author to refer to himself and his co-believers by any other name than that
of Jews. He reproaches the members of sects in Smyrna and Philadelphia
against whom he fulminates with the fact that they "say they are Jews, and
are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan"; of those in Pergamos he says
they hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling block before
the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit
fornication. Here it is therefore not a case of conscious 
Christians
but of people who say they are Jews. Granted, their Judaism is a new
stage...but for that very reason it is the only true one. Hence when the saints
appeared before the throne of God, there came first 144,000 Jews, twelve
thousand from each tribe, and only after them the countless masses of heathens
converted to this renovated Judaism. That was how little our author was aware
in the year 69 of the Christian era that he represented quite a new phase in
the development of a religion which was to become one of the most revolutionary
elements in the history of the human mind.
We
therefore see that the Christianity of that time, which was still unaware of
itself, was as different as heaven from earth from the later dogmatically fixed
universal religion of the Nicene Council; one cannot be recognized in the
other. Here we have neither the dogma nor the morals of later Christianity, but
instead a feeling that one is struggling against the whole world and that the
struggle will be a victorious one, an eagerness for the struggle...
In fact,
the struggle against the world that...was superior in force...is common to the
early Christians and the socialists...And mass movements are bound to be
confused at the beginning...This confusion is to be seen in the formation of numerous
sects which fight against one another with at least the same zeal as against
the common external enemy. So it was with early Christianity, so it was in the
beginning of the socialist movement, no matter how much worried the
well-meaning worthies who preached unity where no unity was possible.
...more
details are given the accusation bears on eating meats offered to idols and on
fornication, two points on which the Jews--the old ones as well as the
Christian ones--were in continual dispute with converted heathens. The meat
from heathen sacrifices was not only served at festal meals where refusal of
the food offered would have seemed improper and could even have been dangerous,
it was also sold in the public markets...By fornication the Jews understood not
only extra nuptial sexual relations but also marriage within the degrees of
relationship prohibited by the Jewish law or between a Jew and a gentile, and
it is in this sense that the word was generally understood in the Acts of the
Apostles 15:20 and 29. But our John has his own views on the sexual relations
allowed to orthodox Jews. He says, 14:4, of the 144,000 heavenly Jews:
"These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are
virgins." And in fact, in our John's heaven there is not a single woman...
...But
this heavenly paradise does not open to the faithful by the mere act of their
death. We shall see that the kingdom of God, the capital of which is the New
Jerusalem, can only be conquered and opened after arduous struggles with the
powers of hell. But in the imagination of the early Christians these struggles
were immediately ahead. John describes his book at the very beginning as the
revelation of "things which must shortly come to pass"; and
immediately afterwards, 1: 3, he declares: "Blessed is he that readeth and
they that hear the words of this prophecy...for the time is at hand.” To
the church in Philadelphia, Christ sends the message: "Behold, I come quickly."
...The sequel will show us how soon this coming was expected.
The visions
of the Apocalypse...are copied throughout, and mostly literally, from earlier
models, partly from the classical prophets of the Old Testament, particularly
Ezekiel, partly from later Jewish apocalypses written after the fashion of the
Book of Daniel and in particular from the Book of Enoch, which had already been
written at least in part. Criticism has shown to the smallest details where our
John got every picture, every menacing sign, every plague sent to unbelieving
humanity...so that he not only shows great poverty of mind, but even himself
proves that he never experienced even in imagination the alleged ecstasies and
visions which he describes.
The
order of these visions is briefly as follows: First, John sees God sitting on
his throne, holding in his hand a book with seven seals, and before him the
Lamb that has been slain and has risen from the dead (Christ) and is found
worthy to open the seals of the book. The opening of the seals is followed by
all sorts of miraculous menacing signs. When the fifth seal is opened, John
sees under the altar of God the souls of the martyrs of Christ that were slain
for the word of God and who cry with a loud voice, saying: “How long, O Lord,
dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on earth?" And
then white robes are given to them and they are told that they must rest for a
little while yet, for more martyrs must be slain.
So here
it is not yet a question of a "religion of love,"...Here undiluted
revenge is preached...So it is in the whole of the book. The nearer the crisis
comes, the heavier the plagues and punishments rain from the heavens and with
all the more satisfaction John announces that the mass of humanity will not
atone for their sins, that new scourges of God must lash them, that Christ must
rule with a rod of iron...
When the
seventh seal is opened, there come seven angels with seven trumpets, and each
time one of them sounds his trumpet new horrors occur. After the seventh blast
seven more angels come onto the scene with the seven vials of the wrath of God,
which they pour out upon the earth; still more plagues and punishments, mainly
boring repetitions of what has 
already
happened several times. Then comes the woman, Babylon, the Great Whore, sitting
arrayed in scarlet over the waters, drunk with the blood of the saints and the
martyrs of Jesus, the great City of the Seven Hills that rules over all the
kings of the earth. She is sitting on a beast with seven heads and ten horns.
The seven heads represent the seven hills, and also seven "kings." Of
those kings "five are fallen, one is, and the other is not yet come,"
and
after
him comes again one of the first five; he was wounded to death but was healed.
He will reign over the world for forty-two months, or three and a half years
(half a week of seven years), and will persecute the faithful to death and
bring the rule of godlessness. But then follows the great final fight, the
saints and martyrs are avenged by the destruction of the Great Whore, Babylon,
and all her followers, i.e., the main mass of mankind; the devil is cast into
the bottomless pit and is shut up there for a thousand years, during which time
Christ reigns with the martyrs risen from the dead. But after a thousand years
the devil is freed again and there is another great battle of the spirits, in
which he is finally defeated. Then follows the second resurrection, when the
other dead also arise and appear before the throne of the judgment of God (not
of Christ, be it noted), and the faithful will enter a new heaven, a new earth,
and a new Jerusalem for life eternal.
...We
have already seen that Babylon, the Great Whore, stands for Rome, the City of
the seven Hills...the beast on which she sits...is Roman world domination,
represented by seven Caesars in succession, one of them having been mortally
wounded...will be healed and will return..."And he causeth all, both small
and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand,
or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save that he had the
mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let
him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number
of man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six." (13:7-18.)
We merely note that boycott is
mentioned here as one of the measures to be applied against Christians by the
Roman Empire--and is therefore patently an invention of the devil--and pass on
to the questions who this Roman emperor IS who reigned once before, was wounded
to death and removed, but will return as the eighth in the series in the role
of Antichrist.
Taking
Augustus as the first, we have: 2. Tiberius, 3. Caligula, 4. Claudius, 5. Nero,
6. Galba. "Five are fallen, and one is." Hence Nero is already fallen
and Galba is. Galba ruled from June 9, 68, to January 15, 69. But immediately
after he ascended the throne, the legions of the Rhine revolted under
Vitellius, while other generals prepared military risings in other provinces.
In Rome itself the praetorians rose, killed Galba, and proclaimed Otho emperor.From
this we see that our Revelation was written under Galba. Probably towards the
end of his rule. Or, at the latest, during the three months (up to April 15,
69) of the rule of Otho, "the seventh." But who is the eighth, who was, and is not? That we learn from
the number 666.
Among
the Semites--Chaldeans and Jews--there was at this time a kind of magic based
on the double meaning of letters. As about three hundred years before our era Hebrew
letters were also used as symbols for numbers: a=1, b=2, g=3, d=4, etc. The
cabala diviners added up the value of each letter of a name and sought from the
sum to prophecy the future of the one who bore the name, e.g., by forming words
or combinations of words of equal value. Secret words and the like were also
expressed in this language of numbers. This art was given the Greek name
GERMATRIAH, geometry; the Chaldeans, who pursued this as a business and were
called MATHEMATICI by Tacitus, were later expelled from Rome under Claudius and
again under Vitellius, presumably for "serious disorders."
It was by means of this
mathematics that our number 666 appeared. it is a disguise for the name of one
of the first five Caesars. But besides the number 666, Irenaeus, at the end of
the second century, knew another reading--616, which, at all events, at a time
when the number puzzle was still widely known. The proof of the solution will
be if it holds up for both numbers.
This
solution was given by Ferdinand Benary of Berlin. The name is Nero. The number
is based on [here are printed Hebraic letters for] Nero Kesar, the Hebrew
spelling of the Greek Neron Kaisar, Emperor Nero, authenticated by means of the
Talmud and Palmyrian inscriptions. This inscription was found on coins of
Nero's minted in the eastern half of the empire. And so--n (nun)=50; r
(resh)=200; v (vau) for o=6; n (nun)=50; k (kaph)=100; s (samech)=60; r
(resh)=200. Total 666. If we take as a basis the Latin spelling NERO CAESAR the
second nun=50 disappears and we get 666 - 50=616, which is Irenaeus's reading.
Christian and
Chrsitian-influenced literature in the first two centuries gives sufficient
indication that the secret of the number 666 was then known to many. Irenaeus
no longer knew it, but, on the other hand, he and many others up to the end of
the third century also knew that the returning Nero was meant by the beast of
the Apocalypse. This trace is then lost, and the work which interests us is
fantastically interpreted by religious-minded future-tellers; I myself as a
child knew old people who, following the example of old Johann Albrecht Bengel,
expected the end of the world and the last judgment in the year 1836. The
prophecy was fulfilled, and to the very year. The victim of the last judgment,
however, was not the sinful world, but the pious interpreters of the Revelation
themselves. For in 1836, F. Benary provided the key to the number 666 and thus
put a torturous end to all the prophetical calculations, that new GEMATRIAH.
[Conclusion of quoted material.]
