Saturday, January 13, 2024

Alice Wood on the Tree of Life in the Ancient Near East

  

It is often said that the Tree of Life is a common symbol or mythological concept in the literature and artwork of the ancient Near East (E.g. Skinner 1910: 59 and Westermann 1974: 290). Yet there is no expression “Tree of Life” in ancient Near Eastern literature outside the biblical books of Genesis and Proverbs. There are only two possible extra-biblical examples of a possible mythological Tree of Life in the ancient Near East: the “plant of rejuvenation” in The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Kiškanu tree, which appears in a bilingual (Sumerian/Akkadian) incantation text (see Widengren 1951: 5–6 for a translation). However, the “plant of rejuvenation” of the Gilgamesh epic is not identical with the Tree of Life in Genesis 2–3 as it is a much smaller plant (it is easily transported). Likewise, the Kiškanu tree has healing properties but does not have the more powerful life-giving properties which the Tree of Life has in Genesis 2–3. Widengren (1951) and Parpola (1997) both attempt to prove that the notion of a Tree of Life was a widespread and theologically significant concept in ancient Near Eastern religion. Both refer chiefly to iconographical evidence to support their arguments. However, sacred trees in ancient Near Eastern artwork are depicted in many different ways. Stordalen (2000: 289–291) notes that a tree could be an image of the life-giving power of the deity or the king and it could also represent cosmic order. Consequently, the trees in ancient Near Eastern iconography do not represent one particular mythological Tree of Life, which could bestow eternal life on the person who ate its fruit. Instead the image of a tree could have many different referents. Sjöberg strongly criticises the view that there is a Tree of Life in Mesopotamian literature or artwork. He argues: “There is no evidence that there was a Tree of Life in Mesopotamian myth and cult. The identification of different trees on Mesopotamian seals as a Tree of Life is a pure hypothesis, a product of pan-Babylonianism which wished to trace all Old Testament religious and mythological concepts back to Mesopotamia” (1984: 221). Although the connections between Genesis 1–11 and some of the themes in the Epic of Gilgamesh mean that the Tree of Life may have something in common with “the plant of rejuvenation”, it is inadvisable to think of the Tree of Life in Genesis 2–3 as a popular ancient Near Eastern motif. (Alice Wood, Of Wings and Wheels: A Synthetic Study of the Biblical Cherubim [Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 385; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008], 57 n. 86)