Bacon reconciled astronomy with Revelation by invoking biblical numerical concealing

Evidence

And these predictions correspond with the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse. For it says that the number of the beast is 663, which is thirty years less than the above number. But scripture in many places subtracts something from a complete number, because this is the custom of Scripture, as Bede says. And thus, perhaps, God wished it, that the things expressed in the Apocalypse not be expressed completely, but that they be somewhat concealed. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1161

Categorization

• DEFINE: Demonstrates the hermeneutic move of treating scriptural numbers as deliberately rounded to fit predictive systems — a recurring scholastic exegesis device.
• XREF: connects to: Bacon imagined rule by scientists deciding unaccountably what knowledge to conceal — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 716