@wotsup - you do not read anyone's posts, do you?
2 points:
1. the origin of the 666 superstition and
2. the origin of finger-hand positions/signs in ancient India, as a healing and meditation aid called 'Mudras' - still used in Yoga toay
1.
There were no arabic numerals when 'Revelations' was written, it was written in Greek by yet another one of those ancient fanciful men, you call 'prophets'.
I do not disrespect them because these people were necessary - prophets - shamans - all were necessary, then most likely also being healers, psychologists, explainera of natural phenomenons, stiller of unruly spirits in air and tree and tent, inventors of new things even - and still are - for us to console us, and to explain the world to us and to teach us to behave like humans, at least within the restrictions of one's tribe - but to take from an ancient time, and apply our modern numeric system to their 'prophecies' is just plain nuts and incorrect!
I have read up on that superstition and one theory goes that they are actually Roman numerals and denote the name of the Pope which is supposed to be shown on his miter - 'pointy hat' to you - but even that doesn't work out, since an 'I' placed before the 'V' indicates the number 4 and not 6 - and I quote further references from an Adventist publication further down.
2. re the thumb and forefinger 'sign' - that's been around since before the sheep- and goat hearders of the 'chosen' people even hear of their God, still believing in a multi-god Universe -
All through Western culture the
O sign produced by connecting forefinger and thumb of the right hand - is a sign of excellence, of approval.
Indians have a healing technique using various finger and hand movements, called 'mudras'.
I, once owned a booklet, which showed a great number of those 'mudras' - useful for almost any minor ailment which plagues humanity and it helped me at the time, but I gave it away to someone needier than I.
Here is an explanation of an ancient mudra which I have seen described as the 'devil's sign' - but it is an energising mudra, called 'karana mudra' dating back in time before the bible
https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/7613/karana-mudrare the number 666 - pages and pages have been written by otherwise brilliant men about this - mostly people who instigated and continued the 'Protestant' (and very necessary!) revolution in Christian belief and practices by people who tried to blacken the Pope even more, if not the misdeeds of so many popes throughout history weren't condemnatory enough, but that's humans for you - we love to exaggerate:
This is an excerpt from a
Seventh Day Adventist publication on the origin of the three sixes in 666:
Swedenborg and some Protestant writers assumed that there were three sixes in 666, overlooking that the 666 in the Greek New Testament text does not consist of three sixes or a triple six. T
he original Greek text did not use Hindu-Arabic numerals with 6’s optically adjacentto one another. It is either hexakosioi hexēkonta hex (six hundred sixty six) written in full, or the abbreviation ch xi S = chi xi stigma as in some texts such as the Chester Beatty Papyrus (P47).52
Used to the Hindu-Arabic system and positional writing, modern readers will simply add 600, 60, and 6, and see only three 6’s as if there are no 0’s.
Modern readers may therefore overlook the fact that the Greek text contains 600 + 60 + 6. In the Hindu-Arabic system, three sixes added together actually total only 18 (6 + 6 + 6 = 18).People in the ancient Mediterranean world, including the
Apostle John who wrote the Apocalypse, had no separate symbols for indicating numbers but used letters of the alphabet. Unlike modern readers, they also did not have a sign to indicate zero. Therefore, they either wrote out six hundred and sixty-six in full or abbreviated the number as ch xi S, that is ch = 600, xi = 60, S= 6, which are obviously also not three sixes (triple six).
Taurisk