TREE OF LIFE. - Tree "in the midst" of the earthly paradise, to which the Creator had given the power to preserve man's life and to keep him from death (Gen. 2, 9).
According to St. Thomas (Summa Theol., I, q. 97, a. 4), it was a natural power: "habebat virtutem fortificandi virtutem speciei contra debilitatem provenientem ex admixtione extranei," and its fruit was to be eaten often for this purpose. But according to the majority of the Fathers, it conferred a supernatural, almost sacramental virtue, producing glorious immortality; the fruit was to be tasted once, in the passage from the state of wayfaring to the state of finality; it was to be the reward of obedience to the prohibition against eating from the "tree of knowledge," which carried with it the sanction of disobedience (St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., III, 23, 6; cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIII, 20; XIV, 26; St. Cyril of Alexandria, Adv. Iulianum, 3). After the sin, God drove the first parents from paradise and placed cherubim "to the east of the garden of Eden to guard the way that led to the tree of life" (Gen. 3:24); so that the tree still retained the power to prolong mortal life.
Its historical reality is generally admitted in Catholic exegetical tradition, as is that of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (v.), with which P. Mayrhofer (in Theologie und Glaube, 28 [1936], pp. 133-62), following others, wrongly identifies it, seeing in it the prohibition against the use of the procreative faculty; such an interpretation was first proposed by Clement of Alexandria, according to whom the sin was against chastity (Strom., III, 14, 17; PG 8, 1193 ff. 1206), and J. Coppens renews it today. Various Catholics today, with J. Feldmann, H. Junker, J. Coppens, give an allegorical coloring to the two trees of paradise, or connect them to popular traditions; as do present-day Protestants (H. Th. Obbink).
In the Bible itself and in tradition the tree of life has received symbolic meanings. In the book of Proverbs, knowledge is compared to the tree of life (3:18), and so too are the actions of the righteous (11:30), the fulfillment of a desire for life (13:12), the tongue that brings peace (15:4). In the Apocalypse the "tree of life" is placed in the heavenly paradise: its fruits will be granted by the Spirit to the victor (2:7); in the midst of the heavenly Jerusalem "and between the two banks of the river the tree of life bore fruit 12 times a year [perennially]" (preferable translation: 22:2, 14; Ezek. 47:7, 12).
The Jewish apocalyptists transplant it to heaven (Apoc. of Moses 28) or to the world to come (Slavonic Enoch 8:3-5; 22:8-10) or to the messianic kingdom where the saints will eat its fruits (Ethiopic Enoch 25:4-7; 22:3-6; Testam. Levi 18:12 ff.; IV Esd. 8:52); referring to the messianic tree of Is. 11:1, they describe the future "plant of righteousness" (Ethiopic Enoch 10:16; 62:8; 84:6; 93:2-5). In rabbinic writings, the tree of life represents blessed immortality (Midrash on Cant. 6:9). The rabbis told fables of the enormous dimensions of this plant (Talmud Jerus., Berachoth I, 1).
The Fathers often see in the "tree of life" a figure of the Cross on which the new Adam restores to us the life lost by the old Adam, or a symbol of the Eucharist. In Ad Diognetum XII (ending by a later author) the two trees figure the true Christian (cf. Dante, Purg., XXXII, 37-60).
Among many peoples there are traditions concerning life-giving trees or "sacred" trees. P. Dhorme, J. Feldmann, A. Ungnad, with others, see allusions to the two trees of paradise in Assyro-Babylonian documents. The Babylonian parallels are, for the most part, connected with the myth of Gilgamesh (v.). One of the prevailing themes in Assyro-Babylonian seals is the sacred tree with two figures, animals or monsters, symmetrically opposed on either side.
Bibliography14 works
In Jewish art: Z. Ameisenova, The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography, in Journal of Warburg Instit., 1939, pp. 326-45; H. G. May, The sacred Tree on Palestine Painted Pottery, in Journal of Amer. Oriental Soc., 59 (1939), pp. 251-59.
For the traditions of the Eastern peoples: A. Deimel, Genesis 2-3 cum monumentis assyriis comparata, in Verbum Domini, 4 (1924), pp. 281-87, 312-15; A. Ungnad, Die Paradiesblume, in Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morgenl. Ges., 79 (1929), p. 111 ff.; I. Plessis, Babylone et la Bible, in DBs, I, col. 757 f.; Z. Mayani, L'arbre sacré et le rite de l'alliance chez les anciens Sémites, Paris 1935; N. Perrot, Les représentations de l'arbre sacré sur les monuments de la Mésopotamie et de l'Elam, Paris 1937; H. Danthine, Le Palmier dattier et les arbres sacrés dans l'iconographie de l'Asie ancienne, Paris 1937; S. N. Kramer, Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree, Chicago 1938.
Antonino Romeo
ART
Apart from hypothetical connections with similar Eastern conceptions, the tree of life, placed according to Gen. 29 in the middle of Paradise, was in patristic exegesis from the earliest times compared with, if not identified with, the cross of Christ. The ubiquity of this symbolism meant that the recent tendency to recognize the tree of life in certain signs discovered on baptismal fonts and sepulchral slabs of the early Middle Ages, as well as in the heraldic stylization of scepters, remained rather problematic. There is no doubt, however, that those forms of the crucifix which still reveal something of their arboreal origin go back to the idea of the lignum vitae
(v. CROCE, ALBERO della). If the crosses on the Eastern ampullae of Bobbio (7th century) recall the bark of a palm, in Western types the cross is depicted with rudiments of branches (Asthrenz) or the "cru-dele" forked cross, chosen by 14th-century German mysticism, or the anchored cross or even the tree of the cross (Baumkreuz).
Bibliography3 works
Kurt Rathe