Richard Bauckham on how Late the Identification of “Nero = 666” was in Scholarship

  

The solution to the riddle of 666 which has been most widely accepted since it was first suggested in 1831 is that 666 is the sum of the letters of Nero Caesar written in Hebrew characters as נרון קסר . . . (Richard Bauckham, “Nero and the Beast,” in The Climax of Prophecy: Studies in the Book of Revelation [London: T&T Clark, 1993], 387)

 

It was apparently suggested independently by four German scholars in 1831 (O.F. Fritsche), 1836 (F. Benary) and 1837 (F. Hitzig, R. Reuss) . . . (Ibid., 387 n. 10)