QUOTE(Jaiden @ May 19 2006, 12:17 AM)

I talked to a friend about this (said that 6/6/06 was approaching), and he said they discovered some very old document recently saying that 666 wasn't really 'the mark of the beast'. I looked it up and found and article:
http://www.beliefnet...ry_16630_1.htmlQUOTE
A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.
Erm, yes... I heard of that number before well,
Satanists, apocalypse watchers and heavy metal guitarists may have to adjust their demonic numerology after a recently deciphered ancient biblical text revealed that 666 is not the fabled Number of the Beast after all.
A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.
Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil's prime number.
"This is a very nice piece to find," Dr. Aitken said. "Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast."
The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.
So, if you did not know better, you might already be heading to your Bible with a red marker to cross out the 666 and write in 616. After all, we have an textual critic of the New Testament telling us 666 is wrong. But not so fast!
I have a few reasons to keep this one on the shelf, and even to doubt it. Note that none of these are proofs that 616 is wrong. They are just my thinking on why I believe 666 is correct still at this point.