“I have often wondered if the “Number of the Beast, 666” referred to hexadecimal...”
My brother the Latin professor had an interesting theory on 666:
Write the Roman numeral equivalent of 666; DCLXVI. Note that it is the Roman numerals in order of size, because 500 plus 100 plus 50 plus 10 plus 5 plus 1 = 666.
His thought was that maybe the biblical message was that “the beast” was counting, or numbers, or math, or science.
This may have been similar to what we do in English, when we say “As easy as 1 2 3.” rather than “as easy as counting”. Why would counting be the devil? I don’t know, but we do have the saying “The devil is in the details”, and when the serpent tempted eve with the forbidden fruit, it was from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Knowledge (or science, or math, or counting) in that context was a bad thing - related to the loss of innocence.
Who knows... but it’s as good a theory as any.