Although stichometry was practical and used ever since Plato's times, not much attention has been given for the Book of Revelation and its stichometric appearence. Just few researches mentions stichometric data of the Book of Revelation and their early history occurrences. The most common values of counted lines has been between 1000 and 1400, on the Greek and Latin version of the Revelation.
In 2015 / 2016 I made some statistical approaches to Revelation textual sources and found this quite intriguing fact. Textus Receptus / Stephanus 1550 edition of the Revelation can be turned into syllables, and divided by hexameter (16) syllable lines. This gives around 1200 lines of text.
But thing is that verses in the Revelation text doesn't match with syllables, if divided with the hexameter. Even thought the count of the lines, 1200 hexameters can have been used as a base for payment for the copyist, evidently text was not written to meet the hexameter form.
Then I found even more exciting fact. Stephanus 1550 edition of the Revelation contains exactly 46512 Greek letters. I quickly recalled that 216*216 is near to that, 46656 to be exact. Now 46512 + 144 is also 46656. So we can think 46512 as the length of the Moon (216) squared, but the saints, 144 excluded, so to say.
Little more time spend with prime factorization of the 46512 showed that it has these primes: 2,3,17,19. My attention was sharpened when I saw 17 because I already knew it was "a hook" for many numerical codes.
It turns out that the letter count of the Revelation enables us to tabularize text to a very handy partitions. A box with 17 letters as columns and 24 such rows, and 19 boxes on 6 lines makes 17*24*19*6 that is 46512. When three of the boxes are seen as a unit, it contains 1224 letters and whole text would be 38 such units.
So the next thing was to create a program to place the whole text on the tabular format. Eventually I did attach two layers on the picture, so that one can see the start and the end of the both modern chapters and verses on it.
What I'm especially happy with this model is that is gives a total overview of the text and place coordinates for any word, syllable, letter, verse, and chapter in the Book of Revelation. And it really is the exact fit with the original Greek text, not even one letter added or removed from it. Orthodox Byzantine and Alexandrian text-types doesn't match with this of course.
I'm providing only the low resolution picture here to maintain dimensions and size of the image small and suitable for web presentation:
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Other useful thing is that now the text had the middle turning point precisely shown. It is striking that the middle part of the whole text is in the 12:6, where the number 1260 (middle of 7 itself) is mentioned. One can also find the Red Dragon (δράκων πυρρός), which isopsephical value is 1224, on the same center theme. We can find almost everything on the Revelation mirrored between good and bad. It makes sense the structure of the book is likewise mirrored.
If one uses the other approach, to arrange all letters of the Book of Revelation to the squared format rather than rectangular format shown above, that is 216*216 letters, and excludes 144 saints (12*12) from the middle of the square (that is from below the altar as stated in the Revelation text). It is easy to find out same 1224 divisions coming out from it. I might send picture of that later.
What this means is that ultimately the ugly grammar of the Revelation could be explained by the artificial manufacturing of the text so that it fits to the certain measurements and isopsephic ideas known at the time 100BC-100AD. The special stress on the last words of the book "And if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book" becomes even more understandable.
It would also mean that both the dimensions of the "little scroll" (biblaridion), values of the words and maybe even the ideas of the book were all made to correlate with the squaring of the circle theme, endlessly repeated, yet one more time pictured below:
![]()
In 2015 / 2016 I made some statistical approaches to Revelation textual sources and found this quite intriguing fact. Textus Receptus / Stephanus 1550 edition of the Revelation can be turned into syllables, and divided by hexameter (16) syllable lines. This gives around 1200 lines of text.
But thing is that verses in the Revelation text doesn't match with syllables, if divided with the hexameter. Even thought the count of the lines, 1200 hexameters can have been used as a base for payment for the copyist, evidently text was not written to meet the hexameter form.
Then I found even more exciting fact. Stephanus 1550 edition of the Revelation contains exactly 46512 Greek letters. I quickly recalled that 216*216 is near to that, 46656 to be exact. Now 46512 + 144 is also 46656. So we can think 46512 as the length of the Moon (216) squared, but the saints, 144 excluded, so to say.
Little more time spend with prime factorization of the 46512 showed that it has these primes: 2,3,17,19. My attention was sharpened when I saw 17 because I already knew it was "a hook" for many numerical codes.
It turns out that the letter count of the Revelation enables us to tabularize text to a very handy partitions. A box with 17 letters as columns and 24 such rows, and 19 boxes on 6 lines makes 17*24*19*6 that is 46512. When three of the boxes are seen as a unit, it contains 1224 letters and whole text would be 38 such units.
So the next thing was to create a program to place the whole text on the tabular format. Eventually I did attach two layers on the picture, so that one can see the start and the end of the both modern chapters and verses on it.
What I'm especially happy with this model is that is gives a total overview of the text and place coordinates for any word, syllable, letter, verse, and chapter in the Book of Revelation. And it really is the exact fit with the original Greek text, not even one letter added or removed from it. Orthodox Byzantine and Alexandrian text-types doesn't match with this of course.
I'm providing only the low resolution picture here to maintain dimensions and size of the image small and suitable for web presentation:
Other useful thing is that now the text had the middle turning point precisely shown. It is striking that the middle part of the whole text is in the 12:6, where the number 1260 (middle of 7 itself) is mentioned. One can also find the Red Dragon (δράκων πυρρός), which isopsephical value is 1224, on the same center theme. We can find almost everything on the Revelation mirrored between good and bad. It makes sense the structure of the book is likewise mirrored.
If one uses the other approach, to arrange all letters of the Book of Revelation to the squared format rather than rectangular format shown above, that is 216*216 letters, and excludes 144 saints (12*12) from the middle of the square (that is from below the altar as stated in the Revelation text). It is easy to find out same 1224 divisions coming out from it. I might send picture of that later.
What this means is that ultimately the ugly grammar of the Revelation could be explained by the artificial manufacturing of the text so that it fits to the certain measurements and isopsephic ideas known at the time 100BC-100AD. The special stress on the last words of the book "And if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book" becomes even more understandable.
It would also mean that both the dimensions of the "little scroll" (biblaridion), values of the words and maybe even the ideas of the book were all made to correlate with the squaring of the circle theme, endlessly repeated, yet one more time pictured below:
