metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
We used numbers symbolically, although much less so nowadays. Since "144,000" would not be written then as we do today, it pretty much "speaks" of a more symbolic meaning, which is what "twelve twelves thousands" would likely speak to.Huh? You are really getting esoteric here. Why would it mean 'completion upon completion', contextually? How many ideas are you mixing up in this?
Yes yes those ''theologians'', many wrong ideas are presented by some of them.
Throughout the scriptures, certain numbers are repeated time and time again, such as 3, 7, 12, 40, and 1000, or variations of those combined. Each of these numbers has a symbolic meaning, although we still have to be careful that the number may be just used as a real number.
What I presented was not my opinion but the opinion of at least some theologians who have analyzed them and put them back into the cultural milieu of the day. For us almost 2000 years later, this breakdown may seem strange, but then what we do today in some areas would likely seem strange 2000 years ago.