Numbers

Καὶ εἶδον ἄγγελον καταβαίνοντα ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ἔχοντα τὴν κλεῖν τῆς ἀβύσσου καὶ ἅλυσιν μεγάλην ἐπὶ τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ.  καὶ ἐκράτησεν τὸν δράκοντα, “ὁ ὄφις” ὁ ἀρχαῖος, ὅς ἐστιν “Διάβολος” καὶ “Ὁ Σατανᾶς,” καὶ ἔδησεν αὐτὸν χίλια ἔτη,  καὶ ἔβαλεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ἄβυσσον, καὶ ἔκλεισεν καὶ ἐσφράγισεν ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ, ἵνα μὴ πλανήσῃ ἔτι τὰ ἔθνη, ἄχρι τελεσθῇ τὰ χίλια ἔτη: μετὰ ταῦτα δεῖ λυθῆναι αὐτὸν μικρὸν χρόνον.

And I saw an angel descending from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he seized (or overpowered) the serpent, the ancient snake, which is accuser and the satan, and he bound him a thousand years, and he cast him into the abyss, and he locked and sealed above him, that he might not yet mislead the gentiles, until the thousand years might be completed; after these it is necessary for him to be loosed a short time.

The passage goes on to describe a select physical resurrection, a ἡ ἀνάστασις ἡ πρώτη. In a recent conversation with my brother-in-law I speculated that perhaps the thousand years, which has been a source of much discussion among the rapture/dispensation camps, from Harold Camping to the Left Behind authors to R.C. Sproul, might not be a millennium in any quantitative sense at all. The terms premillennial, postmillennial, amillennial, etc, have become decisive boundary markers among the various eschatological camps. But perhaps, I wondered, might not the thousand simply mean innumerable? Among first century peasants, would the term "thousand" carry more of a superlative than cardinal sense? Having done some background reading, I was right and wrong.

The word χιλιάς, denoting the number 1000, was certainly the highest cardinal number in regular usage in the Koine language, just like mille (M) in Latin. The earliest Greek attempts at a numerology were quite similar to Hebrew. Including the diagamma and several other vestigial letters, the letters of the alphabet were assigned the values 1-10, then 100-900. (Using the Hebrew alphabet as a cipher, the Revelation 13 riddle about the number of the beast spells out the name of Nero, but this is far beyond the present discussion). Eventually the cardinal numbers were named, and χιλιάς appears as a cardinal and superlative number throughout ancient literature.

For example, Herodotus:

ὡς δὲ ἄβυσσοι εἰσι αἱ πηγαί, ἐς διάπειραν ἔφη τούτου Ψαμμήτιχον Αἰγύπτου βασιλέα ἀπικέσθαι: πολλέων γὰρ αὐτὸν χιλιάδων ὀργυιέων πλεξάμενον κάλον κατεῖναι ταύτῃ καὶ οὐκ ἐξικέσθαι ἐς βυσσόν.

And so that the sources are bottomless (abyssoi) unto trial of this said Psammetichus King of Egypt to come: for he had a rope of many thousands fathoms' length well woven and let down into the spring, but he could not reach to the bottom. (bysson)

In use as a cardinal number, though rather in a mystical than mathematical context, an excerpt from Phaedrus:
τῇ φίλῃ ψυχῇ ἐντεκοῦσα, ἐννέα χιλιάδας ἐτῶν περὶ γῆν κυλινδουμένην αὐτὴν καὶ ὑπὸ γῆς ἄνουν παρέξει.

having caused to the dear soul nine thousands of years above the earth rolled the same and to be present senseless under the earth.

In Revelation itself there are clear differentiations of usage, from a clear cardinal passage in ch. 13

Καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐγένετο “σεισμὸς μέγας,” καὶ τὸ δέκατον τῆς πόλεως “ἔπεσεν,” καὶ ἀπεκτάνθησαν ἐν τῷ σεισμῷ ὀνόματα ἀνθρώπων χιλιάδες ἑπτά,

And in that hour came a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell and died in the earthquake the names (sic) of men seven thousands.

To a clear superlative passage in ch. 5
καὶ εἶδον, καὶ ἤκουσα φωνὴν ἀγγέλων πολλῶν κύκλῳ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ τῶν ζῴων καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, καὶ ἦν ὁ ἀριθμὸς αὐτῶν “μυριάδες μυριάδων καὶ χιλιάδες χιλιάδων,”
And I saw, and I heard the voice of many angels encircled round the throne and of the living things and of the elders, their number was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands.

To the confusing and unclear, as in ch. 9
καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς τῶν στρατευμάτων τοῦ ἱππικοῦ δὶς μυριάδες μυριάδων: ἤκουσα τὸν ἀριθμὸν αὐτῶν.

And the number of the armies of the horseman twice myriads of myriads; I heard their number.

Which brings us to the question of μυριάς, which is clearly a higher number than χιλιάς but with an even more facile meaning. It seems to have had a relatively straightforward sense of "ten-thousand" at certain times, as in this passage from Herotodus:
ἐπείτε γὰρ τάχιστά σε ἐπυθόμην ἐπὶ θάλασσαν καταβαίνοντα τὴν Ἑλληνίδα, βουλόμενός τοι δοῦναι ἐς τὸν πόλεμον χρήματα ἐξεμάνθανον, καὶ εὗρον λογιζόμενος ἀργυρίου μὲν δύο χιλιάδας ἐούσας μοι ταλάντων, χρυσίου δὲ τετρακοσίας μυριάδας στατήρων Δαρεικῶν ἐπιδεούσας ἑπτὰ χιλιάδων.
For since swiftly I learned you were coming upon the Greek sea, desiring to give you money unto the war, so I inquired into the matter, and I found reckoned to me being two thousands of talents of silver, and of gold four-hundred ten-thousands of Daric staters, lacking seven thousands.

Yet most often, as in Revelation, myrias meant myriad; an incalculable number, beyond the expression of what was regularly conceivable at the time. Given the language and mathematical crudeness of the time--keep in mind that Euclid dealt mainly with geometry, fractions, and proportions--I suspect that the "thousand years" in Revelation was a conceptually possible figure being used for superlative language. In a crude modern parallel, if I should say that I "sure could use a million bucks," I can, through some mental effort, determine how much, in terms of houses, taxes, and various subdivisions into thousands and ten thousands, that number "million" is. But this mental exercise is not what I meant to express; I really meant to express that I could use money, and superlative wealth in comparison to my habitual monetary life. This expression would mean something quite different to a professional athlete; perhaps the expressions in Revelation would mean something different to a mathematician or even a historian organizing dates. But the author of Revelation, given his use of superlative numbers elsewhere in the book, probably means "an age," without specifying in cardinal exactness its boundaries.

EDIT 7/6/11:
I was reading Plato the other day and came across this usage of muriados in the superlative exclusively, certainly worth mentioning:
ἀλλ᾽ ἐν πενίᾳ μυρίᾳ εἰμὶ διὰ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ λατρείαν.
but I am in vast (muria) poverty on account of my service to the god.

It's a been a busy week otherwise, full of RPO and patriotic music. We are very near the wedding of Samuel Magus and Kaitlyn...