one hundred (100): the cardinal number, used both for exact counts and, loosely, as a round figure for a large or complete quantity
A hundred is the plainest kind of number, and much of the time the New Testament uses it to count exactly what it says: a hundred coins owed, a hundred measures of oil or wheat, a hundred pounds of burial spices, a crowd seated in groups of a hundred. In these places the figure is meant to be taken at face value.
But a hundred is also a natural round number, the way an English speaker says they have said something "a hundred times." Here the point is not a precise tally but a picture: a full flock is a hundred sheep, and a harvest that comes back a hundredfold is one of overflowing abundance. The exact arithmetic matters less than the sense of a complete or lavish whole.
A third use appears in Revelation, where a hundred turns up inside larger symbolic totals such as the hundred and forty-four thousand and the hundred and forty-four cubits of the city wall. There the weight of meaning rests on the twelve and the thousand that these figures are built from; the hundred is part of the scaffolding rather than the symbol itself.
Most of the long-running debates about this word are really debates about which of these uses is in play. When a harvest yields a hundredfold, is that a good crop or a miracle? When Revelation counts a hundred and forty-four thousand, is that a literal census or an image of the whole people of God? The word itself simply means "one hundred"; the interpretation turns on how a given writer is using it.
Nuances
Whether the sower's hundredfold yield pictures a miraculous, superabundant harvest or an agriculturally ordinary one.
- contestedAn image of eschatological superabundance, a yield beyond what normal farming produces.; Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 3rd ed. (London: SCM, 1972), pp. 149-150; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 215
- contestedAn agriculturally ordinary yield, since a single grain head can bear thirty to a hundred grains; the parable highlights the variation in fruitfulness, not a miracle.; Robert K. McIver, "One Hundred-Fold Yield: Miraculous or Mundane?", NTS 40 (1994): 606-608; W. D. Davies & D. C. Allison, Matthew (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark), vol. 2 (1991), on 13:8
- minorityA realistic field yield that works as social critique: what peasants would keep if the kingdom's economics replaced Roman and temple exactions.; Ernest van Eck, "The harvest and the kingdom," HTS Theological Studies 70/1 (2014)
Whether the hundred and forty-four thousand names a symbolic figure for the complete people of God or a literal count of ethnic Israel.
- majorityA symbolic number for the whole people of God, formed from twelve squared times a thousand; John hears a census but then sees a countless multitude.; Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), pp. 215-229; G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 416-423
- minorityA literal or ethnically specific number of Israelites.; David E. Aune, Revelation (WBC 52A-C; Nashville: Nelson, 1997-98), vol. 2, pp. 440ff.