I heard Renan’s alleged discoveries, e.g., with regard to the 
exact dating, to the month, of the composition of the so-called 
Revelation of St. John, the solution of the mystical number 
666=Népwv Kaioap and its confirmation by the variant 
616=Nero Caesar, etc., etc.,2 in Berlin in the winter term of 
1841-42 at Professor Ferdinand Benary’s lecture on _ the 
Apocalypse. Only Benary, the real solver of the mystical number, 
was honest enough to admit how much he owed to his 
predecessors,” while Mr. Renan, here as elsewhere, simply appro- 
priates for himself the results of a protracted development in 
German science. 

1873 paper 

No. 197 (First Instalment), July 18, 1873 time 

a E. Renan, L’Antéchrist, Paris, 1873.— Ed. 

b F. Benary, “Erklarung der Zahl 666 <yfo'> in der Apocalypse <13, 18.> 
und ihrer Variante 616 <ywo’ >”, Zeitschrift für spekulative Theologie..., Vol. 1, Part 2, 
Berlin, 1836, pp. 205-06.— Ed. 

453 

Frederick Engels