Numbers
39
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Origin 1908 to 1965
Thirty-nine is 3 x 13. The Protestant Old Testament contains thirty-nine books, a count produced by dividing texts that the Hebrew canon keeps together; the same material is twenty-four books in Jewish reckoning, so the number is denominational rather than intrinsic. Thirty-nine is also the number of lashes in Jewish practice, derived from the forty of Deuteronomy 25:3 by deliberate reduction so that the limit could never be exceeded, a rule set out in the Mishnah at Makkot 3:10. Paul reports receiving forty lashes minus one on five occasions at 2 Corinthians 11:24. In digit-reduction numerology it reduces to 3.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin Period Origin PeriodThe arithmological reading of the first numbers, one as source, two as division, four as justice, seven as virgin, ten as completion, reaches us through Platonic and Neopythagorean writers of the centuries after Plato. Burkert's finding is that it cannot be traced to Pythagoras himself, whose activity was religious rather than mathematical: the doctrines were credited backwards to him. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Origin PeriodThe system that gives a number a personality, and a person a number, was assembled in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century out of New Thought material. Balliett's The Philosophy of Numbers appeared in 1908; the chart positions, pinnacles and cycles were added by her successors over the next fifty years. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Place of OriginThe Greek world, and above all the Greek cities of southern Italy where the Pythagorean societies were established; the arithmological literature itself is later and largely eastern Mediterranean. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Place of OriginThe United States, and specifically the New Thought circuit of the north-eastern seaboard; Balliett worked from Atlantic City. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Attributed Author / CompilerAttributed by the tradition to Pythagoras. Burkert's study is the standard demonstration that the number-doctrines carrying his name are the work of later hands, and that almost nothing in them can be shown to go back to the sixth century BCE. The attribution is recorded because it is what the tradition says, not because it holds. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Attributed Author / CompilerMrs. L. Dow Balliett, who published the first version of the modern system in 1908 and to whom Dudley devotes a chapter. What later authors added, the pinnacles, the challenges, the cycles, the personal year, is theirs, and this atlas's own numerology-position entries cite four different authors between 1908 and 1965 for what is presented as one system. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Origin of the NamePythagorean numerology is a twentieth-century label. The system it names has no demonstrable descent from Pythagoras, from the Pythagorean societies, or from the ancient arithmological literature; the letter-value chart it rests on was drawn up in the United States after 1900. The name borrows a pedigree, the oldest move in the subject. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceDeuteronomy caps corporal punishment at forty lashes; the Mishnah sets the actual practice at thirty nine, one short of the biblical limit, so that a miscount in administering the punishment could never accidentally exceed what the Torah allows. Paul's own account of his floggings, forty lashes less one, in Second Corinthians reflects this same practice. 3Tradition: Rabbinic Judaism (Mishnah, Makkot, the thirty nine lashes) Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Mishnah enumerates thirty nine categories of labor forbidden on the Sabbath, melachot, derived from the kinds of work needed to build the tabernacle. Every later question in Jewish law about what counts as Sabbath work is measured against this fixed list of thirty nine, not against a general sense of exertion. 3Tradition: Rabbinic Judaism (Mishnah, Shabbat, the thirty nine categories of forbidden labor) Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 1 Modern Numerology
Reduction in the Modern SystemThe modern system reduces every number above nine by adding its digits: 3 + 9 = 12, then 1 + 2 = 3. Whatever the system says of 39 it therefore says of 3, because it holds no separate doctrine for the higher numbers. The stated exceptions are 11, 22 and 33, which it leaves unreduced and calls master numbers. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseNumerology has been sold since Balliett as a basis for decisions: which name to take, which date to marry on, which house number to buy. Dudley's survey of what numerologists sell is the standard critical account and its finding is blunt, numbers have power over minds, not over events. These entries record what the tradition says, not advice. 1 Learn More
Forty Minus One
Thirty-nine is three times thirteen and reduces to three, but its significance is almost entirely that of forty less one. The law of Deuteronomy caps judicial flogging at forty lashes, and to avoid any risk of exceeding the limit through a miscount, Jewish practice fixed the penalty at thirty-nine; Paul reports in Second Corinthians that he five times received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. The number thus stands for the maximum permitted punishment, the round forty deliberately held one short out of scruple for the law. Christian tradition later took the thirty-nine lashes into the Passion narrative, and various pious schemes matched them to a count of human ailments, though scripture itself does not number the scourging of Jesus.
Cheiro's 1926 Book of Numbers assigns thirty-nine the reading already given to thirty, itself described in his scheme as neither fortunate nor unfortunate, sometimes weak and sometimes powerful depending on its company in a chart; the pairing holds by digital root, both numbers reducing to three, and Florence Campbell's 1931 book and Juno Jordan's 1965 systematisation both preserved it, an ambivalent modern reading that has no bearing on the number's much firmer institutional weight in the lashes, the canon and the Articles already described above.
Thirty-Nine as a Canon and a Code
The Protestant Old Testament is counted as thirty-nine books, so the number marks the extent of the Hebrew canon as reckoned in the Reformed churches, over against the forty-six of the Catholic Old Testament. The Church of England defined its doctrine in the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571, which remain a historic standard of Anglican belief. In rabbinic law the categories of work forbidden on the sabbath are enumerated as thirty-nine, the melachot listed in the Mishnah tractate Shabbat, derived from the kinds of labour involved in building the Tabernacle. Between the lashes, the canon, the Articles and the thirty-nine forbidden works, the number carries an unusual amount of specific institutional weight for one that the symbolic traditions otherwise ignore.
Walter Burkert's study of the Pythagorean tradition and Underwood Dudley's critical survey of the modern system, Numerology: Or What Pythagoras Wrought, both treat this kind of borrowed, ambivalent compound reading as characteristic of Cheiro's scheme generally, a chart built for readings of names and dates rather than for tracking a number's use in canon law or judicial procedure; the thirty-nine of the Articles, the lashes and the melachot belongs to an entirely separate, older and better-documented body of institutional history.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Disciplines That Use This
The modern numerological system assigns this number a meaning, which is why the atlas records it as a subject in its own right, though this does not endorse what the discipline says about it. This link shows only that the discipline works with this particular number; the readings of the number itself belong to whichever tradition holds them.
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