666

I asked my friend Lucian Craciun to comment on the connection between 666 and the Star of David. Here’s our correspondence:

Dear Lucian,
Attached is an email to Professor Meir Bar Ilan, an expert on numerology. I asked him to comment on the phenomenon of connecting 666 with the Star of David. He answered (in Hebrew) that there is no connection - do you think you can comment on that? (Who started it? why?)

Dear Professor Meir Bar Ilan,
I heard your lecture about Numerology in Yavne Magen David Symposium and got the impression that you have the qualifications to fight against the attack on the Jewish Identity of those claiming that the Star of David is 666. They say that the hexagram is the sign of Anti Christ with 6 points, 6 angles and 6 planes (666).

Here are some excerpts from Lucian’s answer to me:

All that I can tell You is that whatever link there is between the Hexagram and the NUMBER, no one ever remarked it until the advent of Adventism. It basically all started with William Miller (1800’s-1850’s), and continued (reached an apogee, actually) with Ellen G. White (1850’s-1900’s). Its zealous legacy is faithfully preserved by the Seventh Day Adventists, and by the Jehovah’s Witness.
At first, it was the usual Pope-bashing stuff, common among Protestants: They’ve said that one of the titles of the Pope, i.e., The Vicar of Christ, (Vicarius Christi, in Latin), could be also rendered The Vicar of the Son of God, the numerical equivalent of the later (using Roman numerals) being the Number of the Beast of Revelations, namely ‘three hundred threescore and six’.
Other such Beastly stuff is the Electronic Bar-Code, the Inter-Net (yep, www = 666 – [in Hebrew] and the list could go on and on ...
I mean no offense, but I’m hardly surprised that they picked on the Jewish Star also. You’ll also have to understand that it’s common among them to read the morning newspaper expecting (or trying to see) a fulfillment of the prophecies of the Book of Revelations.

What I find ironic in this whole situation is that Saint Andrew from Caesarea in Cappadocia, who lived around the 7th century AD, said in his commentary of the Apocalypse, regarding the Mark of the Beast (set on the forehead and on the right hand), that in the end-times, there will come a sect, whose followers will not use their right hand to mark their forehead with the Sign of the Cross. (And this happened half-a-millennium before the very appearance of Protestantism on the face of this Planet ... so it cannot be said of it that it is a post-factum [probably also derogatory] interpretation of Scripture, meant to bash poor, well-intended, little Christians).

P.S.
Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan's comment to this posting:

In my books I wrote on 666 and on many other numbers.
I have a lot more to say about the author of the Book of Revelation
(from which we got this number - 666 and others, such as 144,000).
One thing is clear the author of that book (preferred by me than all
the other books in the NT) had in mind many plastic symbols, the Star of
David is not included!
I must admit that until the lectures I heard last week (April 2007) I
didn't make up my mind concerning the meaning of the Star of David and
its meaning-evaluation.

Those who make the connection between the Star and 666 are descendants
of the anti-Semites (the author of the Book of Revelation, a converted
Jew, included) who connect the Jewish people with the Beast (=monster).
However, the author said other bad things on the Jews (such as:
worshippers of Satan), and there is no need to add more abominations to his
pen.

One last point: all the numbers discussed by me in my Numerological
books have no plastic symbol (except 5 that goes together with the
Pentagram, the Pythagorean symbol). If one claims that 666 = the Star, than he
should convince his audience that 10 has a symbol by itself, 3 has
another symbol, and so on.
NO! numbers are symbols, and they don't need to be symbolized in a
drawing

Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan
Jewish History Department | Talmud Department
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900 Israel