Number of the Beast adopt it (Haer. v.30,3). In the 380s, correcting the existing Latin-language version of the New Testament (commonly referred to as the "Vetus Latina"), Jerome retained "666". Around 2005, a fragment from Papyrus 115, taken from the Oxyrhynchus site, was discovered at the Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum. It gave the beast's number as . This fragment is the oldest manuscript (about 1,700 years old) of Revelation 13 found . "Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus", known before the "Papyrus 115" finding but dating to after it, has 616 written in full: , "hexakosioi deka hex" ( "six hundred and sixteen"). "Papyrus 115" and "Ephraemi
The Beast (Revelation) that interprets prophecies of the Bible, especially the Books of Daniel and Revelation, as events which have already happened in the first century AD. Preterist academic scholars generally identify the first beast from the sea with the Roman Empire, particularly with Emperor Nero. The beast from the earth is generally identified with the Roman imperial cult or the Jewish religious system of the first century that conspired with the Roman state to suppress and persecute the early church. Sometimes there is a particular identification with a personage such as a chief administrator of Roman rule in Ephesus and Asia Minor.