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.” (George Arthur Buttrick, The Interpreter’s Bible:
The Holy Scriptures in the King James and Revised Standard Versions with
General Articles and Introduction, Exegesis, Exposition for Each Book of the
Bible, 12 vols. [New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951-57], 9:571) 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 an 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 5.19.16. 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. (Quoted in A. G. Baxter and
J. A. Ziesler, “Paul and Arboriculture: Roans 11:17-24,” Journal for the
Study of the New Testament 24 [1985]: 26)
Baxter and Ziesler conclude: “What
Paul describes is therefore a perfectly possible process that would be
undertaken to rejuvenate a tree.” (Ibid., 27) 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 earliest trees to propagate by this means. Olive growers
normally use wild olive grafts only to rejuvenate domesticated or tame trees;
tame trees are also grated onto the roots of wild trees to give the plants more
vigor. (Wilford M. Hess, “Recent Notes about Olives in Antiquity,” BYU
Studies 39, no. 4 [2000]: 117)
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. (See, for instance, Buttrick, The
Interpreter’s Bible, 9:571; Baxter and Ziesler, “Paul and Arboriculture,”
25)
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. (Baxter and Ziesler, “Paul and
Arboriculture,” 26) 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 Zenor 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. (James A. Brooks, “An
Introduction to Textual Criticism,” in Biblical Hermeneutics: A
Comprehensive Introduction to Interpreting Scripture, edited Bruce Corley,
Steve Lemke, and Grant Lovejoy [Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman
Publishers, 1996], 258) In the case of Zenos and Paul, Zenos is clearly more
complex. Perhaps some version of Zenos’s allegory survived in 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. (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual
Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford
Books, 2007], 2:522-24)
