mod_rewrite and Internal Server Error. Argh!

I have been noticing this error in my server logs along with intermittent 500 Internal Server Error pages.

[Tue Mar 2 20:59:10 2010] [error] [client x.x.x.x] mod_rewrite: maximum number of internal redirects reached. Assuming configuration error. Use 'RewriteOptions MaxRedirects' to increase the limit if neccessary.

In my .htaccess, I set the max redirects to 500 with:

RewriteOptions MaxRedirects=500

But that only leads to the following error:

[Tue Mar 2 21:03:09 2010] [error] [client 65.36.241.76] Request exceeded the limit of 20 internal redirects due to probable configuration error. Use 'LimitInternalRecursion' to increase the limit if necessary. Use 'LogLevel debug' to get a backtrace.

And the 500 errors remain.

I’m nearly pulling my hair out in frustration from this. Please advise!