This is the third mention of the allegory of the olive tree in the Book of Mormon. Lehi discussed it briefly (1 Ne. 10:12–14). Nephi interpreted Lehi’s words for Laman and Lemuel (1 Ne. 15:12–18). In both of those examples, there are sufficient references to suggest that they refer to Zenos’s allegory on the brass plates, which Lehi had read by that time. Nevertheless, the function of the allegory in the narrative differs between those two references in 1 Nephi and this full quotation in Jacob. Both Lehi and Nephi use the allegory in the context of their family’s prophetic history. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 10:12.) Jacob employs Zenos’s allegory specifically to answer his question: “And now, my beloved, how is it possible that these, after having rejected the sure foundation, can ever build upon it, that it may become the head of their corner?” (Jacob 4:17).
Zenos’s allegory describes the efforts of the Lord (the great husbandman) with the children of Israel, showing how the ultimate reconciliation of the Jews will occur so that they may build upon the firm foundation of the Son of God. In the context of this discourse, the allegory answers a question arising from Jacob’s sermon on the coming Messiah. Nephi and Jacob have preached of the Atoning Messiah and of a crucified Messiah. The Messianic expectation set by Isaiah would be primarily of a Triumphant Messiah. Jacob is addressing what must have been a puzzling aspect in prophecies about Christ. How might one reconcile a rejected and crucified Messiah with the Triumphal Messiah? How can one rejected by Israel become Israel’s leader? Jacob explanation is not in his own words but based in scripture from the brass plates. It is also typical of how he and Nephi cite scripture: lengthy passages presented as self-evident and largely without commentary.
Literature: Analogies like the allegory of the olive tree are not uncommon in the scriptures. The metaphorical/allegorical use of agricultural practices is only to be expected for a people whose lives are intimately bound to the earth. However, such analogies from life go further than simply using the example from nature to teach a point. The significant use of allegory depends not solely upon the understanding of the processes of nature, but also upon readily established symbolic associations.
Four botanical species figure as symbols in the Hebrew and early Christian scriptures: the date palm, the olive tree, the fig, and the grapevine. Each plant is significant as a source of nourishment and economy in Israel; but even more importantly, each participates in a symbolic complex that associates the nation of Israel with those plants. Thus, the plant symbolizes Israel.
The Bible has two important horticultural allegories: one in Isaiah 5:1–7 and one in Romans 11:16–24. Isaiah’s reads:
Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:
And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.
What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?
And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:
And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry. (Isa. 5:1–7)
Isaiah makes explicit the association between the vine and Israel. This analogy presents the vine, the vineyard, a master of the vineyard, a wild and natural fruit, and efforts of the master to improve the vine. Each of these elements is represented in at least structural form in both Zenos’s allegory and that in Romans. A significant difference here, however, is the master’s conclusion that the vineyard is unworthy of continued efforts. He tears down the wall to destroy the vineyard. Isaiah was the prophet of the Assyrian conquest and this allegory would appear to foreshadow that invasion.
The second biblical horticultural allegory, one which is even more significant for establishing a context for Zenos’ allegory, appears in Romans 11:16–24:
For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.
And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;
Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.
Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in.
Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:
For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.
Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again.
For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?
This allegory and that of Zenos which Jacob cites are so clearly parallel that some type of connection is obvious. If the Book of Mormon is truly an ancient work, which I affirm it to be, then the Zenos allegory precedes Paul. If, however, Paul originated the allegory of the olive tree, then its appearance in the Book of Mormon usage becomes problematic. Thus, understanding Paul’s allegory is essential to accepting and understanding the ancient allegory of Zenos in the Book of Mormon.
Paul’s allegory focuses on the conceptual boundary between Jew and Gentile in the gospel. This single symbolic focus is much less complicated than Zenos’s allegory, which symbolically describes a larger number of events and peoples. Paul’s allegory depends upon three symbols: the root, the natural branches, and the wild branches. Where Isaiah’s “wild fruit” was a symbol for evil works, Paul’s is less pejorative—representing something foreign to the “natural” tree. The two uses differ in the symbolic sets they define. In Isaiah the natural/wild pair stands for the duality good/evil. In Paul, however, the natural/wild pairing stands for Israel/ Gentile, with no negative connotations attached to the Gentile half of the pairing. Indeed, the Gentile half proves beneficial. This essential difference in the two allegories suggests that Paul’s allegory does not directly use Isaiah.
For some years, the standard interpretation of Paul has been rather unfavorable, such as this passage from the Interpreter’s Bible commentary on Romans: “At more than one point his ignorance of husbandry is disclosed: branches from a wild olive tree would not be grafted on a cultivated olive stock (if anything, the reverse would be done), and if they were, the grafted branches would not bear the fruit of the cultivated tree.” This point is absolutely critical, asserting as it does that Paul misunderstood olive tree husbandry and, hence, that the allegory’s meaning requires accepting Paul’s error in reporting such practices. If that is the case, then the presence of a similar practice in Zenos would not be a reflection of actual practice and would be more likely to be a copy of Paul’s error.
New Testament scholars A. G. Baxter and J. A. Ziesler cite a work by Sir William Ramsey which documents a near-contemporary of Paul named Columella, who discusses grafting wild branches onto an olive tree:
Columella writes a good deal about grafting, in De rustica 5.11.1–15 and De arboribus 26–27 (although a good deal of the material in the two works overlaps, even to the point of being straight repetition). He includes a considerable amount also about oleiculture [olive culture], in De rustica from 5.9.16. He certainly thinks he knows what he is talking about, and it is interesting that in 5.9.16, almost in passing, he says that well-established trees that are failing to produce proper crops can be rejuvenated and made more productive if they are ingrafted with shoots from the wild olive.
Baxter and Ziesler conclude: “What Paul describes is therefore a perfectly possible process that would be undertaken to rejuvenate a tree.” They also note a similar practice in Mediterranean countries, including Israel. Wilford M. Hess, professor of botany at Brigham Young University, describes the multiple ways in which grafting is used in oleiculture:
Since these domesticated forms readily cross with the wild forms, resulting in a wide range of genetic variation, it is not desirable to grow new trees from seeds. Thus, the standard procedure used to propagate desirable plants was, and still is, planting cuttings. The olive is one of the easiest trees to propagate by this means. Olive growers normally use wild olive grafts only to rejuvenate domesticated or tame trees; tame trees are also grafted onto the roots of wild trees to give the plants more vigor.
With this support for the legitimacy of the practice Paul describes, we may also suggest another solution to one of the problems that raised questions about Paul’s allegory in the first place. At least two modern commentators noted that Paul, an urban Jew, would be unlikely to understand the intricacies of oleiculture.
While the valid basis for understanding the allegory is confirming, we must now answer the question of Paul’s presumed ignorance of olive culture in reverse. Just how did an urban dweller know about this rather unusual practice? Baxter and Ziesler simply restate Ramsay’s assumption that the importance of olive culture created a de facto knowledge base about caring for the trees. Certainly the olive’s importance is well known; but would the importance of olive products equate to a widespread understanding of how to care for the tree, particularly when few ancient or modern writers understand that grafting in wild branches was valid, even though it was clearly attested anciently and even though olive culture has continued into modern times?
For these academic writers, defending the validity of Paul’s allegory was sufficient, and the source of his knowledge became a very secondary point. Into this academic discussion, Zenos comes as an answer rather than as a copy. As a work that preceded Paul and that clearly incorporates complex oleicultural practices, Zenos may have been either the ultimate source or a parallel tapping of an oral source for a similar image. Paul would not, then, have created the allegory, but simply repeated an image known from alternate sources—sources that either trace to Zenos or which precede Zenos as part of an oral tradition.
A rule of thumb in establishing transmission is that the more complete text is the older. In the case of Zenos and Paul, Zenos is clearly the more complex. Perhaps some version of Zenos’s allegory survived to Paul’s time but is unavailable to us. Perhaps Paul was reworking other sources that descended from Zenos. In any case, Zenos’s text fits into the well-defined context of olive culture in the pre-Christian Mediterranean world. Not only is Zenos’s allegory more complex, but it also authentically represents the oleiculture of its period.