The Tree of Life as olive (1)

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In the writings of the Syrian Church Fathers, the accounts of the Tree of Life in terms of the olive are of two kinds. One tradition does not make the tree itself an olive, but sees an olive beside it, while the other makes the Tree of Life itself an olive. The former tradition usually does not specify the tree, though it stresses the excellence of its fruits; in the oldest apocalyptic work that deals with it, 1 Enoch, the tree is fragrant and unwithering and its fruits are ‘like the dates of palm’ (24.2). The olive tree beside the Tree of Life appears first in one text of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch; both texts describe the Tree of Life as fragrant, but whereas the first text describes the tree’s splendid colours and manifold fruits, the second says: ‘and another olive tree alongside was always discharging the oil of its fruit (2 Enoch 8.4-5). In the midrash called Book of Adam and Eve tells how the dying Adam asked Eve and Seth to go back to paradise and beg the angel to go ‘to the tree of his mercy, whence floweth the oil of life. In the Apocalypse of Moses, the angel is asked to ‘give me of the tree out of which the oil flows’. The detail reappears in the Descensus Christi ad Inferos in the Gospel of Nicodemus (6th century CE) and is then elaborated in the medieval legends about the prehistory of the Cross.

The second group of traditions regards the Tree of Life as itself an olive. Thus the pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, explaining the name Christ, say that ‘his Father anointed him from the beginning with oil which came from the Tree of Life’. Celsus alleged that candidates undergoing baptismal anointing say ‘I have been anointed with white chrism from the Tree of Life’ (Origen, Contra Celsum 6.27). It fits with the references to chrism in the Gospel of Philip and with the Hippolytan blessing of olives, at least in the Latin transmission of the text, and with the allusions in the anointing prayers in the Acts of Thomas (121.157). The identification of the Olive-tree of Life with Christ is explicit in Cyril of Jerusalem, who thus stands close to Ephrem: ‘when you stripped, you were anointed with exorcised oil, from the very hairs of your head to your feet, and were made partakers of the good olive-tree, Jesus Christ’ (Cat. Myst. 2.3). In the various forms of the tradition which interpret the Tree of Life as an olive or as having an olive beside it, we find early Jewish midrashim speculating on the trees in paradise, but the traditions are developed entirely by Judaeo-Christians and Gnostics. In the Christian use of this imagery, the oil or chrism used in initiation was said to ‘come from’ the Tree of Life, which at least in some forms of the tradition was symbolically identified with Christ.

Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Acts of Thomas 121.157
pseudo-Clement, Recognitions 1.46
Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogic Catechesis 2.3
1 Enoch 24.2
2 Enoch 8.4-5
Origen, Contra Celsum 6.27

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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