Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Brant Gardner on Romans 11:16-24 and Paul's Knowledge of Olive Culture

  

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)