"OK, so a bunch of copies with 616 got out there," I said. "But they looked back to the oldest copies to find that 666 was the real number of the beast, so no harm done, right?"

Tuck smiled yet again. I guess it wasn't often that he got to show off his knowledge to somebody so uninformed, yet so willing to listen.

"That's what everyone thought, at first," he said. "Now, the oldest known copy of the Book of Revelation is a 1,700 year old document, discovered in Upper Egypt and written in Greek, known as Papyrus 115."

"Is older necessarily better?" I wondered out loud.

"Anything written on papyrus is generally considered to be among the best witnesses to the original text of the New Testament. Unfortunately, only fragments of them remain, and parts of them are illegible. So while Papyrus 115 could theoretically offer desperately needed evidence to the number of the beast debate, we couldn't read the relevant part of it."

"History is forgotten once again," I lamented. I could see how Tuck's job could be so frustrating at times.

"Yes, but fortunately history was remembered in 2005," Tuck beamed. "That's the year that Oxford scientists invented an advanced technique called multi-spectral imaging. By isolating the precise wavelength that gives the hidden ink the best contrast against its background, it reveals some things that the human eye can't otherwise see."

"And using this technology," I speculated, "we could finally read the number of the beast on Papyrus 115?"

"Chi, iota, sigma," Tuck said. "616."

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