yeah, but what does that number specifically have to do with any one person?
Sorry, I posted that right as Enoch posted his explanation. Hey, I'm wondering, where do the values for the different letters come from? Why is Resh 200 and Samech 60 etc?
because, he was a famous tyrant, and the book was written almost directly after Nero's "Suicide"
Numerology is code,Alphabetic systems
There are many numerology systems which assign numerical value to the letters of an alphabet. Examples include the Abjad numerals in Arabic, the Hebrew numerals, Armenian numerals, and Greek numerals. The practice within Jewish tradition of assigning mystical meaning to words based on their numerical values, and on connections between words of equal value, is known as gematria.
1= a, j, s; 2= b, k, t; 3= c, l, u; 4= d, m, v; 5= e, n, w; 6= f, o, x; 7= g, p, y; 8= h, q, z; 9= i, r
...and are then summed.
Examples:
3,489 → 3 + 4 + 8 + 9 = 24 → 2 + 4 = 6
Hello → 8 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 6 = 25 → 2 + 5 = 7
A quicker way to arrive at a single-digit "summation" is simply to take the value modulo 9, substituting a 0 result with 9 itself.
Different methods of calculation exist, including Chaldean, Pythagorean, Hebraic, Helyn Hitchcock's method, Phonetic, Japanese, Arabic and Indian.
The examples above are calculated using decimal (base 10) arithmetic. Other number systems exist, such as binary, octal, hexadecimal and vigesimal; summing digits in these bases yields different results. The first example, shown above, appears thus when rendered in octal (base 8):
3,48910 = 66418 → 6 + 6 + 4 + 1 = 218 → 2 + 1 = 38 = 310
