Jacob 5--Allegory of the tame and wild olive trees.

[skalenfehl]

Where to begin!? I'll continue to post notes and points about this allegory as I delve into this subject because there is so much to discuss. I studied this during my mission and learned a lot from this chapter and how this relates to the House of Israel and the seasons or "long times" that pass in certain verses relate to the apostacy, restoration, millenium and the end of the earth.

Olive trees! Why olives? We know that olive oil is used for the healing of sick and for anointing purposes and has been thus used since the days of Moses. Note that Christ prayed in the garden of Gethsemene in the mount of olives. When we heal the sick we use the anointed oil pressed pressed from olives, perhaps symbolizing the pure blood of Christ that was pressed from every pore as he suffered the sins and pains of man in His infinite Atonement.

Anciently, oil pressed from olives was considered the cleanest, clearest, brightest-burning, longest-lasting of all animal and vegetable oils. It was also the purest of oils and was thus appropriate for holy anointings. Joseph Fielding Smith has written, “We find through all the prophetic writings that olive trees and olive oil are emblems of sacredness and purity.” (Answers to Gospel Questions, 5 vols., Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1957–66, 1:152.)

The primary subject of this allegory described by Jacob is the tame olive tree, which represents the house of Israel. Everything in this allegory is symbolized from the Lord (obvious) to the servants, to the branches, fruit, the "times" and more. There are basically seven scenes in this allegory and five locations of the vineyard representing different periods of time of the earth.

[skalenfehl]

I found some interesting passages at lds.org about olives and our Savior to go along with what I've posted above.

Jesus was accorded titles of unique significance. One was the Messiah, which in Hebrew means “anointed.” The other was the Christ, which in the Greek language means “anointed” as well. In our day, as it was in His day, the ordinance of administration to the sick includes anointing with the consecrated oil of the olive. So the next time you witness consecrated oil being anointed on the head of one to be blessed, and these sacred words are said, “I anoint you with this consecrated oil,” remember what that original consecration cost. Remember what it meant to all who had ever lived and who ever would yet live. Remember the redemptive power of healing, soothing, and ministering to those in need. Remember, just as the body of the olive, which was pressed for the oil that gave light, so the Savior was pressed. From every pore oozed the lifeblood of our Redeemer. Throughout the joyous days of your mission, when your cup of gladness runs over, remember His cup of bitterness which made it possible. And when sore trials come upon you, remember Gethsemane.

The Olive Tree

One Jewish legend identifies the tree of life as the olive tree.

The olive tree is a perennial, not a deciduous tree. Its leaves do not seasonally fade nor fall. Through scorching heat and winter cold they are continually rejuvenated. The tree is thus evergreen, or “everolive.” Without cultivation it is a wild, unruly, easily corrupted tree. Only after long, patient cultivating, usually eight to ten years, does it begin to yield fruit. Long after that, new shoots often come forth from apparently dead roots. As one stands in the olive groves, struck by the gnarled tree trunks that are at once ugly and beautiful, it is hard to avoid the impression of travail—of ancient life and renewing life. Today some trees, still productive on the Mount of Olives, are known by scientific measure to be at least 1,800 years old.

The Fruit

To this day, preparing the rock-pocked, hand-plowed land and then planting, cultivating, pruning, grafting, and harvesting olive trees is an arduous process. Even after the harvest, the olives are bitter, useless to man or beast. To make them edible, one must place them in a large stone box, layer them with salt and vinegar, make more layers of olives, and add more purgatives. Slowly the bitterness is purged from them. These refined olives were a delicious staple food that graced the tables of the common people and of the rich.

To produce olive oil, the refined olives had to be crushed in a press. The mellowed and seasoned olives were placed in strong bags and flattened on a furrowed stone. Then a huge crushing circular rock was rolled around on top, paced by a mule or an ox and a stinging whip. Another method used heavy wooden levers or screws twisting beams downward like a winch upon the stone with the same effect: pressure, pressure, pressure—until the oil flowed.

Olive oil was used both internally and externally. It was a cooking oil, made better by heating, and was a condiment for salads and breads and meats. The pure oil had other vital uses: it was an almost universal antidote, reversing the effects of a variety of poisons. It was often used in a poultice believed to drain infection or sickness. As an ointment, olive oil—mingled with other liquids—soothed bruises and wounds and open sores. (In Jesus’ parable, oil and wine were poured by the Good Samaritan into the wounds of the robbed and beaten traveler near Jericho. Oil and wine were poured by the temple priests on the altar of the temple. Olive oil was also the substance of light and heat in Palestine. Into olive lamps—small vessels with a hole at each end—one poured the oil. Even in a darkened room one lamp, one thin flame of light, was enough to lighten the face. A Jewish oral teaching says the drinking of olive oil is likewise light to the mind—that it enhances intellectual processes. The mash that remained after repeated crushings of oil was a household fuel, needed even in the summer Judean desert after sunset. The image of pouring oil on troubled waters, and the associated olive branch of peace—such as the offering of peace and relief to Noah after raging seas—were common in Bible lore. In other spiritual contexts oil was the token of forgiveness. And hence Paul speaks of it as “the oil of gladness.” (Heb. 1:9.)

[WillowTheWhisp]

Have you ever noticed how gorgeous olive wood is? The grain is lovely and items carved from olive wood are so tactile and beautiful. I have a small silver pendant of an olive tree which was brought back for me by a friend and it reminds me of so many things in the scriptures. It's so symbolic. Of course the oil used for annointing is always olive oil too.

[Hemidakota]

On the other hand, these prophets who allegorical use Olive trees maybe have depth in their uses as a tree husbandmen.

Do you remember hearing about the Eagle and the Chickens allegory story?

[Hemidakota]

Something by Author Wallace that interest you about the horticulturally. I have this on my thumbdrive.

The Allegory of the Tame and Wild Olive Trees Horticulturally

By Arthur Wallace

If Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon as fiction, rather than translating ancient records as he claimed, he put together a surprising number of ancient horticultural practices with a precision and accuracy that cannot easily be explained. No one has yet proved that many of these horticultural practices were known to anyone in western New York during the nineteenth century, which at least invites serious consideration of Joseph Smith's claim that he translated ancient documents by divine means.

One of the most interesting horticultural descriptions in the Book of Mormon is the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees, a transcription or retelling of a parable by an Israelite prophet named Zenos, whose writings were recorded on brass plates that the family had brought with them from Jerusalem about 600 B.C. (see Jacob 5, 6). (The Apostle Paul may have known of this allegory, for he made reference in his writings to wild olive trees and the house of Israel [see Romans 11:16-25].) No indication is given of the period in which Zenos lived, but he is quoted in several other places in the Book of Mormon (see 1 Nephi 19:10; Alma 33, 34; Helaman 8, 15; 3 Nephi 10).

In this allegory, Zenos likens Israel to a tame olive tree and the Gentiles to a wild olive tree, using the parable form that seems to have been a favorite literary device of the ancient Hebrews. It is not his intent, of course, to convey horticultural information; those aspects he mentions only casually. Nor do we know whether Zenos had firsthand experience with olive culture or whether his information was derived from other sources. However, if what he says fits into a correct broad horticultural picture, he will have met at least preliminary tests for authenticity.

The allegory or parable is a long and detailed one in which many facets of olive culture are mentioned. It begins when a tame olive tree becomes old and begins to decay (Israel had begun to grow unfaithful; see Jacob 5:3). The lord of the vineyard then has his servants (prophets and teachers) carefully prune and cultivate it (unrighteous elements were to be removed and righteousness was encouraged; v. 5).

The tree responds with a few new shoots, but the top continues to die (the Israelites were generally in apostasy; v. 6). The lord of the vineyard personally grafts the new shoots onto other trees and has his servants graft branches from a wild olive tree (the Gentiles) onto the old tree to preserve and invigorate it (v. 8). Many wild branches are grafted to the old tree (the house of Israel was scattered and mixed with other peoples and the gospel was taken to the Gentiles; vv. 9-10).

The natural branches of the tree are grafted into trees scattered throughout the vineyard (the descendants of Lehi reading the parable would have seen their own escape from Jerusalem as fulfillment of this "grafting"; v. 14). Meanwhile, the wild branches (gentile Christians in the first and second centuries A.D.) have greatly invigorated the root of the old tree.

The shoots of the old tree grafted to new trees produce good fruit in locations which we can designate A and B. These trees grow in relatively infertile soil. Tree C, located in a fertile area, produces part good fruit and part "wild" fruit. (The Israelite group in America would consider themselves to be this third group, since the Book of Mormon consistently describes America as "choice above all other lands." The division into good and wild fruit would be taken to mean the righteous Nephites and the unrighteous Lamanites into which Lehi's descendants had soon split. See vv. 20-25.)

The original tree eventually degenerates, producing all kinds of bad fruit (a general apostasy from the true Church of Christ); but the grafting has reinvigorated the roots, which are now strong. Its original branches, grafted far and wide in the vineyard, are also no longer producing good fruit (vv. 30, 34, 39).

On tree C, the wild branch overpowers the part of the tree that bears good fruit, and the servant suggests that the wild branches have been developing at the expense of the roots, even though the roots remain generally good. He is instructed to go to locations A and B, find stock from the original tree, and regraft it into the old tree and also into tree C, since all of them have good roots. (The gospel has been restored and missionaries gather the house of Israel from throughout the world, including America. The branches from the old tree, first grafted to other trees and then returned to the old tree, represent the restoration of the house of Israel to Jerusalem before the Jewish people accept Christ. See vv. 40, 48, 54, 57.)

The servant grafts these returning branches to the old tree to replace branches where the fruit is very bitter, but not all branches receive grafts. The ungrafted branches serve as a source of nutrients and are pruned off as the grafted branches develop. The top and the root are to be kept in balance. The natural branches do grow and produce good fruit. Tree C also undergoes this grafting process. (Both the Jewish people and the Lamanite remnant in America accept the gospel and are restored to their former favor with God; vv. 65-66, 74.)

[Hemidakota]

Part -2

The allegory concludes with the threat that the tree will be burned if the fruit again becomes bad (v. 77).

This is an extensive parable, with a remarkably detailed structure revolving around the care and production of olives. Could Joseph Smith have fabricated it?

First, wild olives do exist in Israel. On a visit I made to Israel in 1970, a guide pointed one out near Mount Carmel, and I made further inquiries. The wild olive tree is a shrub or bush. It may be either a plant grown from seeds of a tame olive but under wild conditions where it usually does not resemble the parent tree, or one of about twenty species of a plant related to the tame olive but producing small and inedible fruit. In other words, the wild olive is a contemporary reality, and is also mentioned in the Bible-though only in the New Testament (see Romans 11:17). Wild olives are foreign to New York.

A potentially troublesome element in the allegory is the consistent use of the term vineyard, usually referring to a location where grapes are grown, rather than orchard, the more conventional term for fruit trees. Orchard is a biblical term, appearing in Song of Solomon 4:13. The Smith family had an orchard; indeed, nineteenth-century farms routinely included orchards. Young Joseph also would have known about grape culture, since grapes in nineteenth-century New York stood second only to apples in importance as an agricultural product. His use of vineyard is thus interesting.

One possible explanation might be the multiple meanings of vineyard. Webster's unabridged dictionary (3d ed., 1960) includes the sense of a field of labor, particularly for religious purposes (specifically missionary work), an appropriate usage within Zenos's parable. It can also mean a collection of more than one kind of fruit tree, as in a garden containing many kinds of trees, which could include olive trees. In Isaiah 5:7, the house of Israel is called a vineyard. Other biblical references further imply that the word's usage in the allegory of the olive tree representing the house of Israel is very acceptable.

Less perplexing are the possible shades of ambiguity in other terms. Good, tame, and natural may be synonyms, but we cannot be certain. "Wild fruit," "evil fruit," and "bad fruit" seem to be used consistently to mean fruit that was not good. Jacob 5:58 says, "We will pluck from the trees those branches which are ripened, that must perish, and cast them into the fire."

However, these semantic elements are less important in evaluating the allegory than areas of obvious ignorance which would be apparent if someone were trying to commit a fraud by writing of things with which he is not familiar, then claiming ancient authorship for his work.

As to the horticultural content of the allegory, most of the information seems to be sound. The response of the tree to the initial pruning and cultivation with new shoots is completely predictable. Adventitious shoots very commonly grow from the base of olive trees, especially when water and fertilizer are applied. The fact that the wild branches grafted to the old tree bear good fruit is horticulturally probable if the wild branches are genetically capable of producing good fruit. It is also not unlikely for a tree to produce two different kinds of fruit (as did the tree in location C). "Bud sports," or mutations that result in fruit different from that of the parent tree, are relatively common.

The circumstance of the old tree with wild branches engrafted producing first good fruit, then several varieties of bad fruit, transcends correct horticulture at this point, although "delayed incompatibility" can give similar results. A particular combination of rootstock and scion (top part of the tree) may do very well for a period of time and then deteriorate in a variety of ways, due to a slight change in environment or a disease. The allegorical situation would require the tree to demonstrate both incompatibility of grafts and production of bud sports simultaneously, however, and the described results are more elaborate than we would commonly see in an actual horticultural situation.

A very common horticultural phenomenon, however, is that of tree C, where the "wild" part of the tree overcomes the good part. It is very common in fruit trees that have been grafted with more than one scion for the stronger one to take over the entire tree and crowd out the weaker one(s). This principle is often seen when a rootstock sprouts a sucker at the base of a trunk and the fast-growing sucker successfully competes with the trunk for moisture and nutrients. Suckers are very common on olive trees.

The servant's suggestion that the excessive top growth was coming at the expense of the roots refers to a situation that can occur when a too-abundant supply of nitrogen produces rank, succulent top growth with reciprocal underdeveloped root growth. This situation can also occur when certain plant hormones trigger inappropriate growth in the plant.

[Hemidakota]

Part -3 cont'd

The circular grafting of branches back onto their parent tree is also a horticulturally sound practice. The rootstock of a scion may be incompatible with that scion, while the grafting of a root-stock clone onto the incompatible graft may produce success. It is also very common to work through a tree over time, grafting more and more branches with the selected scion stock rather than grafting all of them on the rootstock at once. Grapefruit trees are often changed to orange trees by this "double top" procedure. The servant's instructions to keep the top and root in balance find a horticultural parallel: he wanted to avoid suckers growing from near the roots, which could happen if all the old branches were removed at once. A proliferation of suckers could channel nutrients to themselves, leaving the grafts starved. However, modern practices make no special effort to keep a root-and-top balance as long as water is not limited. It would be interesting to have more information about ancient horticulture to see if Zenos's allegory reflected contemporary practice.

The fact that the natural branches produced good fruit once they were regrafted to the original stock suggests that the prior tendency of these same clones to produce poor fruit was the result of incompatibility, not disease, and that grafting corrected the incompatibility. If disease had been involved in either the original tree or in the far-off places of the vineyard, the double-worked branches would also have been diseased.

Some popular belief holds that olive trees grow best on rocky, infertile hillsides. This is incorrect. Olives will tolerate such conditions, but they do much better in fertile, deep, well-cultivated soils. They require a great deal of water, and hence cultivation to remove weeds and pruning to create a tree rather than a bush. Olives are amenable to many pruning methods. Pruning, rather than genetic manipulation, creates dwarf olives and also shapes them to fit machinery. When the allegory insists on the importance of cultivation, pruning, and manuring, its author is not in error.

At no point in the allegory does the author manifest general ignorance on the subject of olive culture. The numerous causal references to pruning, cultivating, fertilizing, grafting, preserving species by grafting, incompatibility, bud sports, scion vigor, root rejuvenation, double graftage, root-top growth balances, and invigoration from graftage of wild species are most interesting. Whoever wrote the chapter had considerable correct information at his fingertips, even though it was not until the twentieth century that ancient horticulture received systematic attention. It now forms topics for discussion at national and international professional meetings.

However, such information did not generally form part of Joseph Smith's frontier culture. Nor did he betray the ancient allegory by using more modern horticultural terms, such as budding, rootstock, mulching, cultivation, mutation, incompatibility, and so forth. As a final detail, even though pruning was certainly part of nineteenth-century American practices, Joseph Smith would have been familiar with it in relation to deciduous trees or vines, in which pruning has to consider the wood on which fruit would be borne the next year. Grapes and apples would be examples with which Joseph Smith would have been familiar. In contrast, the pruning of the olive, a subtropical evergreen fruit tree, is initially for training to make it into a tree rather than a bush, and second for rejuvenation-or, more appropriately, survival. In the nine times the word pruning is used in the parable, survival rather than increased fruit production, is implied. Survival pruning reverses the aging process by altering the balance of regulators (hormones). It is not the type of pruning Joseph Smith knew.

In short, this prolonged parable recorded in the Book of Mormon is one of its elements which, by its accurate incorporation of ancient horticultural practices, invites serious consideration of Joseph Smith's claim that he translated rather than wrote the Book of Mormon.

Notes

• 1. Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1967), pp. 269-73. My thanks to Professor Royce S. Bringhurst of the University of California at Davis for suggesting in 1963 an examination of horticultural elements of the Book of Mormon. See also my Evidence in Science and in Religion (Los Angeles: privately published, 1966), pp. 95-98.
• 2. Joseph Fielding Smith, "Who Were the Prophets Zenos and Zenock?" Improvement Era 66 (March 1963): 158-59, discusses the meaning of the allegory in depth.
• 3. H. T. Hartmann, I. Uriu, and O. Lilliland, "Olive Nutrition," in Fruit Nutrition, ed. Norman F. Childers (New Brunswick, N.J.: Horticultural Publications, Rutgers University, 1966), p. 252.
• 4. L. H. Bailey, Cyclopedia of American Horticulture (New York: MacMillan Co., 1901), pp. 1084-87.
• 5. Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith by His Mother (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), p. 59, records that the family sold fruit from its orchard in Vermont when Joseph was around ten years of age; p. 79 records that Joseph rested under an apple tree; p. 96 mentions that the family had a sugar orchard (maple trees). See Bailey, Cyclopedia pp. 1084-87 for additional information on horticulture in nineteenth-century New York.
• 6. Bailey, Cyclopedia, pp. 1084-87.
• 7. S. H. Cameron and R. W. Hodgson, "Effect of Severity of Pruning on Top Rejuvenation in Citrus Trees," Proceedings of the American Society for Horticultural Science 39 (1941): 67-72.
• 8. A. D. Shamel, The Citrus Industry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946); see Chapter 10, "Bud Variation and Bud Selection."
• 9. N. O. Bosemark, "The Influence of Nitrogen on Root Development," Physiologia Plantarum 7 (1954): 497-502.
• 10. Childers, Fruit Nutrition, p. 252.

[skalenfehl]

Fascinating. You know, I've always believed that the creation of our earth, most things in it and the heavens above were in part created to serve as symbolism and similitudes of the gospel and Christ's atonement. It's almost like which came first the chicken or the egg? Which came first, creation or the symbols behind the creation. For example:

-Olive trees

-Sun, moon, stars

-wheat, tares

-sheep/lambs/nature of for sacrifice

The list goes on...

Thanks for sharing, Hemidakota. I look forward to posting more, particularly about the seven time periods referred to in the allegory.

[jadams_4040]

Where to begin!? I'll continue to post notes and points about this allegory as I delve into this subject because there is so much to discuss. I studied this during my mission and learned a lot from this chapter and how this relates to the House of Israel and the seasons or "long times" that pass in certain verses relate to the apostacy, restoration, millenium and the end of the earth.

Olive trees! Why olives? We know that olive oil is used for the healing of sick and for anointing purposes and has been thus used since the days of Moses. Note that Christ prayed in the garden of Gethsemene in the mount of olives. When we heal the sick we use the anointed oil pressed pressed from olives, perhaps symbolizing the pure blood of Christ that was pressed from every pore as he suffered the sins and pains of man in His infinite Atonement.

The primary subject of this allegory described by Jacob is the tame olive tree, which represents the house of Israel. Everything in this allegory is symbolized from the Lord (obvious) to the servants, to the branches, fruit, the "times" and more. There are basically seven scenes in this allegory and five locations of the vineyard representing different periods of time of the earth.

And also the olive tree must be grafted with braches to insure good olives to come forth, so when we consider this aspect of the tree, it makes for a whole lot more good scripture understanding.:)

[Hemidakota]

I can testify, I was one of those 'WILD STICKS' that require grafting on the tame Olive tree. I can only thank Deity for such love for us.

[Hemidakota]

Some more thought:

Olive Culture

"Jacob's (or rather Zenos's) treatise on ancient olive culture (Jacob 5�6) is accurate in every detail: Olive trees do have to be pruned and cultivated diligently; the top branches are indeed the first to wither, and the new shoots do come right out of the trunk; . . . the ancient way of strengthening the old trees (especially in Greece) was to graft in the shoots of the oleaster or wild olive; also, shoots from valuable old trees were transplanted to keep the stock alive after the parent tree should perish; to a surprising degree the olive prefers poor and rocky ground, whereas rich soil produces inferior fruit; too much grafting produces a nondescript and cluttered yield of fruit; the top branches if allowed to grow as in Spain or France, while producing a good shade tree, will indeed sap the strength of the tree and give a poor crop; fertilizing with dung is very important, in spite of the preference for rocky ground, and has been practiced since ancient times; the thing to be most guarded against is bitterness in the fruit. All these points, taken from a treatise on ancient olive culture, are duly, though quite casually, noted in Zenos's Parable of the Olive Tree."39. Nibley, Since Cumorah, 238�39. See Nibley, Temple and Cosmos, 244�52.

[Dale]

I was impressed by this also. The Book of Mormon is just to well worked out not to be based on a pre-existent manuscript. When one throws in evidences of textual antiquity i became less concerned about having to have an ancient inscription with the name Nephi on it. To me this kind of stuff is just good evidence for the antiquity of the text.