The number of the beast

Without offence to the sacred name of neutrality, I beg to recount the following:

A reader has written to me, pointing out that, if one sets out the letters of the alphabet in due order, and writes opposite A the figure 100, opposite B 101, opposite C 102, and so on the end, and then, having written the appropriate numbers opposite the name HITLER, adds them up, the total comes to 666, which is "the number of the beast." - (Vide Revelation xiii., 18.)

Now this method of reckoning the Number of the Beast has offended what remnants I possess of a classical conscience. Years ago - more years than I care to remember - I attended lectures by Professor Josiah Gilbart Smyly, one-time Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Dublin, and surely one of the most stimulating and delightful lecturers who ever flourished within the walls of Trinity. And among the things that Professor Smyly recounted to me and my fellows was the method by which the early Christians calculated the Number of the Beast.

Unhappily, I cannot explain it here, for a reason which often provoked my old friend and former editor, John Edward Healy, to melancholy - namely, that this newspaper possesses no Greek type. The essence of the system is that, in the old Greek system of arithmetic, the letters of the alphabet stood for numerals. "Alpha" was 1, "beta" was 2, and so on, up to an obsolete letter which stood for 9; then "iota" was 10, "kappa" 11, and so on again, until the hundreds began with "rho" 100, "sigma" 200, and what have you - as the Americans say!

But, to return to the beginning, having heard of the new and spurious means of ascertaining the number of the Beast, I set myself to check it by the proper system, which involves, of course, transliteration into Greek. And, though I could not fit Herr Hitler into the scheme, I did discover that the letters composing the title of his gospel, "MEIN KAMPF," add nicely up to 666 - which is fair enough. Admittedly, I must represent the "pf" of "Kampf" by the single Greek letter "phi," but who bothers about a little thing like that!

The Irish Times. November 9th, 1939.