This superfluousness of Mk II20 25 is mo! of such attempted explanations as that 1 The cursing of the fiix-tree w.is 'of course' meant by Jesus symbolically, the concrete fulfilment given it by God being with- out intention on Jesus' part. <.>n this statement Wellhausen («(f loc.) comments sarcasticallv : ' Weiss understands him. God misunderstood him.' Nevertheless Weiss is clearly right in maintaining that the purpose of Jesus would be just as com- pletely met if the story stopped with lli-ia.
But even more fatal than the superfluousnes.s of the sequel is its perversion of the real symbolism of the incident. Nothing is said of that which analogy (Mt 3'° 7'"-'", Lk 13''-'-') proves to be the real moral lesson ; but the appended sayings are adapted to find in it mere evidence of the wonder-working
594
FIG-TREi:
FIG-TEEE
power of belief. The disciples are to learn that the prayer, or even the fiat, of faith — here taken as equivalent to undoubting assurance — can set at defiance the order of nature. This, the writer understands, was the purpose of the cursing. As part of the rebuke of the disciples' half-heartedness {ditpuxta) in the case of the epUeptic boy (Mt 17'"- "" ; cf. Lk 17^- ', 1 Co 13"), the hj^perbolic saying on mountain-moving faith is iusti'tied. Adapted along with Mt 6"- '* to give the moral lesson of the withering of the fig-tree, both fall to a lower plane, scarcely above that of mere thaumaturgy. The symbolism of the cursing is lost in the mere wonder of withering a tree, a needless miracle of disjilay.
(c) Even after recognition of the unhistorical character of the addition Mk 11*-", the incident of the cursing is still encumbered with inherent im- probabilities, of which the most formidable is the imputation of hunger as the motive of Jesus' ap- proach to the tree. It is not enough to admit tliat the curse must be explained, if at all, by the dis- covery, made upon close inspection, that the tree was empty, not only of those supposititious edible products which could not be reasonably expected, but of even the rudiments of a crop in the season, and to suggest that when Jesus arrived ' inmiedi- ately the disappointment of unsatislied hunger was lost in the moral lesson which flashed across His mind' (Post, ^.c). Change of irotive is in-" conceivable, because hunger cannot have caused the approach. Relics of the last season's crop, if sought at all, would be sought on a tree whose still leafless branches left them in plain si^ht, not where they Avould be concealed by the foliage, if not tlirust off by the new growth. So, too, of paggtm ; but the degree of starvation necessary to suggest appeasing tlie stomach by paggtm at the season in question is improbable.
There remains as a historical basis for the story only the possibility that Jesus' footsteps might lie attracted by the suggestion of a possible moral lesson in the precocious leafage of a wayside tree, the discovery that it covered no promise of fruit leading Him thereupon to an utterance in the vein of prophetic sjonbolism. Gould (Intcrnat. Crit. Com. ' Mark,' 212) finds evidence in Hos 1'-*, Jn 4«;", Mt 13'"-'* that 'such acted [.arables were not without precedent among the Jews.' More apposite might be the reference of Ai5. xi. in to prophets in the early Church wlio might ' do something as an outward mysterj' typical of the Church (Eph 5'-) because in like manner did the prophets of old time ' ; cf. Ac 21". But the only real parallel in the story of Jesus is the parable (unaccompanied by any narrative of fact) of the Stater in the Fish's Alouth, Mt 17-^-". The propensity of the reader, if not of t)he Evangelist nimself, to take this sym- bolic direction to Peter as implying tlie real execu- tion of a miracle, shows how easily a symbolic sentence of death, directed against the fig-tree as the representative of unrepentant Israel, niiglit be taken to imply its literal withering away.
Due consideration for all three objections leaves the question still open whether the story of Mk H 12-13. records a specific utterance of this symbolic kind directed against a particular tree, on a j)ar- ticular occasion ; or whether tradition and the Evangelist togetlier have not simply localized be- tween Bethphage (' Fig-town') and Jerusalem, on occasion of the supreme \isitation of tlie latter, a \isualized version of the parable Lk 13""".
In favour of the fonrifr ^■iew mni- he fitPd rritifs no Ir^s r.idical than H^ .1- Ilnlti'n.aim (ll.lh,,,,. ,„l i„r\ ,„„| .1 w,.,s^
(.Das Acltesle F.' ■ ■ i
Schwartz in fa\. i
even that of Ml. i i
from the orrh.Li'i- 1 -_ -
Titus, pointed l<> i!,\ .Ili, ..-,.: ;. ,...,.. ...^ ti.^ lhu.^i.,.! '.■■:
Jesus' warning and proiuist- ; bin Sch\\:iiU: would nol admit a
basis of fact for this early identification by tradition of ' the ' fig-tree, but rather such as Cheyne instances in ' the inn ' of the Good Samaritan.
The phenomena of the text indicate, however, that the process must at least precede our text of JIark. For our Evangelist the symbolic sense has already disappeared, leaving only the work of power. Before this stage of the process could be reached the parable of the Barren Fig-tree must already have been transformed by local tradition into symbolic cursing of some given tree, and the moral les.son have been subsequentlj' eclipsed by the purely thaumaturgic interest.