Romans 11: The Olive Tree’s Root

Revised: 20 April 2013

The apostle Paul asserted in Romans 11:1 that God had not rejected his people. Speaking metaphorically, he went on to compare the people of Israel to a cultivated olive tree. Because of unbelief, some, but not all, of the tree’s branches had been broken off, and a wild olive branch had been grafted to the stock.^[14] Paul emphasized, however, that grafting the original branches back to the stock of the cultivated tree would be a much simpler task than grafting a wild olive to it.

Paul spoke about Israel as a “cultivated olive tree” whose rootage was in the Patriarchs, particularly Abraham.^[15] Some Bible commentators, however, interpreted the root of the olive tree as Christ or his messianic program.^[16] When making that claim, they came dangerously close to endorsing an old, rotten idea: the root represents the New Israel, that is, the Church.

Once an exegete has identified the root of Paul’s metaphor with the Church, he or she cannot easily escape a subsequent and more pernicious conclusion: Israel of the flesh ceased to exist long ago. Rejecting carnal Israel, God gave her place of distinction to another. That other is the Church.

There are two reasons that the olive tree’s root has been wrongly interpreted as symbolizing the Messiah. First, the Greek word ῥίζα (ridza, root) appears in Romans 11:16. There ridza seems to parallel the Greek word ἀπαρχή (aparxe, firstfruits), which calls to mind 1 Corinthians 15:20, 23. There Paul referred to Jesus, whom he regarded as Messiah, as “the aparxe (the firstfruits) of those who have fallen asleep.”

Check out these recent JP articles:

• 
  Like Every Sparrow Falling: The Symbolism of Sparrows in a Saying of Jesus
  The multivalent image of the sparrow in ancient Jewish thought made it a useful vehicle for conveying messages about human and divine relationships.
• 
  Better Than the Day of Birth: Reflecting on David Flusser’s Interpretation of the Love Commandment on the 25th Anniversary of His Passing
  I regard the twenty-fifth anniversary of David Flusser’s passing not solely as a day of loss, but also as the day that gave him to the world.
• 
  25 Years Since David Flusser’s Passing
  Professor Serge Ruzer shares his recollections of Israeli scholar David Flusser on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death.
• 
  The Discomposure of Jesus’ Biography (Reboot): A Modification to Lindsey’s Conjectured Stages of Synoptic Transmission
  How did the Hebrew biography of Jesus disintegrate into the isolated pericopae that make up the Synoptic Gospels?
• 
  Was the Hemorrhaging Woman Jesus Healed Named Rebekah?
  Is it possible to retrieve the name of the woman who touched Jesus’ tzitzit?
• 
  Did Jesus Raise Jairus’ Daughter from the Dead?
  Should readers give more weight to the bystanders’ impressions or to the words Jesus said?

And check out these items from the JP Bookstore:

• ^[1] Paul used aparxe (firstfruits) in this sense in Rom. 16:5 and 1 Cor. 16:15. ↩
• ^[2] Compare Neh. 10:37; Ezek. 44:30. ↩
• ^[3] Benefit accrues to the Jewish people as a whole thanks to the faithfulness of Jewish believers in Jesus! The firstfruits makes the whole holy (Rom. 11:16a). ↩
• ^[4] There may have existed masked anti-Jewish sentiment among the Gentile members of the church at Rome. These Gentile believers gladly took advantage of the privileges granted by the Roman government to the Jewish religion, but at the same time wished to be viewed as distinct from the Jewish community. See Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135-425) (trans. [from French] by H. McKeating; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 100-101. See also Harry J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960), 9-11, 22, 45. According to Leon, it was only during the brutal persecution of Christians that followed the great fire of 64 A.D. that Roman authorities began to differentiate between Jews and Christians of the city (p. 28). For official documents from the first two centuries B.C. and the first half of the first century A.D. guaranteeing Jews of the Mediterranean world the right to observe their religious customs, and other privileges, see Josephus, Antiq. 14:185-267; 19:279-91. ↩
• ^[5] An acronym for Rabbi David Kimhi, a Bible commentator and grammarian who lived in southern France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. ↩
• ^[6] Targum Jonathan interprets the "the root of Jesse" in Isa. 11:10 as "the son of the sons of Jesse," rendering Isa. 11:1 as, "And a king will come forth from the sons of Jesse, and the Messiah from the son of his sons will be anointed." ↩
• ^[7] Amos Hacham, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 1-35 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1984), 129 (Hebrew). ↩
• ^[8] I am indebted to Joseph Frankovic for pointing out to me the relevance of Acts 13:23. I also am indebted to him for his editorial suggestions and for the many discussions we have had about Romans 11. Please note his “God’s Mercy and Our Disobedience.” These two articles are theological siblings and gain much by being read one after the other. ↩
• ^[9] "R. Isaac said, At the time of the destruction of the Temple the Holy One, blessed be He, found Abraham standing in the Temple. Said He, 'What hath My beloved to do in My house?' [Jer. 11:15]. Abraham replied, 'I have come concerning the fate of my children'. Said He, 'Thy children sinned and have gone into exile'. 'Perhaps', said Abraham, 'they only sinned in error?' And He answered, 'She hath wrought lewdness' [ibid.]. 'Perhaps only a few sinned?' 'With many' [ibid.], came the reply. 'Still', he pleaded, 'Thou shouldst have remembered unto them the covenant of circumcision'. And He replied, 'The hallowed flesh is passed from thee' [ibid.]. 'Perhaps hadst Thou waited for them they would have repented', he pleaded. And He replied, 'When thou doest evil, then thou rejoicest!' [ibid.]. Thereupon he put his hands on his head and wept bitterly, and cried, 'Perhaps, Heaven forfend, there is no hope for them'. Then came forth a Heavenly Voice and said, The Lord called thy name a leafy olive-tree, fair with goodly fruit [Jer. 11:16]: as the olive-tree produces its best only at the very end, so Israel will flourish at the end of time" (Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 53^b; English translation by Eli Cashdan, in The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Kodashim: Volume 1 [ed. Isidore Epstein; London: The Soncino Press, 1948], 321). ↩
• ^[10] See Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972), 8:1380-1407; The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (ed. F. L. Cross; London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 694-95. ↩
• ^[11] Encyclopaedia Judaica, 15:1264-65; The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1367-68. ↩
• ^[12] Encyclopaedia Judaica, 8:1404. ↩
• ^[13] I view myself as the descendant of those who took part in the Crusades, and carried out the Inquisition and other atrocities against the Jewish people. I wrote the Postscript to this article as a personal reminder to be vigilant lest I repeat the sins of my Christian ancestors. I believe that, as a Christian, I dare not have the attitude, "If I had lived in the days of my fathers, I would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets" (see Matt 23:30). Rather, I must accept responsibility for my Christian ancestors' sins, vow not to repeat them, express my sorrow to the Jewish people, and in any and every way possible, make restitution for these sins.

  I realize that it is easy for me, living in a more enlightened age, to criticize my Christian predecessor, yet I know that it is my responsibility to denounce Christian anti-Semitism, past and present. I must acknowledge the anti-Semitic attitudes and actions of these ancestors—they were more horrible than I am capable of describing—and vow to do all in my power to repair the great damage that has been done. It may be unfair for a twentieth-century citizen of the United States, for example, to judge seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American slave-holders such as the United States' third president, Thomas Jefferson; nevertheless, slavery cannot be accepted or condoned. I am obligated to condemn both wrong thinking and sinful actions of earlier Christians towards the Jewish people, including church fathers such as Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Origen and John Chrysostom.

  The inhumanity, the depravity, of Christian anti-Semitism cannot be excused—better to strongly condemn it than attempt the impossible task of justifying it. I feel scandalized and embarrassed by expressions of Christian anti-Semitism such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, outbreaks of anti-Jewish pogroms in eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia and the Ukraine, and the Holocaust. I mourn the anti-Semitic words and deeds of my Christian forefathers. My hope is that I can learn from history and, with God's help, improve on my forefathers' sordid record, perhaps restoring in some small measure the church's broken relationship with the synagogue. Amen! ↩

• ^[14] “The two beautiful sprigs which God engrafted into Abraham are Ruth and Naomi [sic, Naamah], who let themselves be planted into Israel as proselytes,” Christian Maurer, referring to Rabbi Eleazar’s saying preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 63^a (entry ῥίζα [ridza] in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [ed. Gerhard Friedrich; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1968], 6:987): “What is the meaning of, ‘And in you will all the families of the earth be blessed’ [Gen. 12:3]? The Holy One, Blessed Be He, said to Abraham: ‘I have two branches to engraft upon you: Ruth the Moabitess and Naamah the Ammonitess.’ ‘All the families of the earth.’ [This scriptural phrase means that] even the other families who dwell on the earth are not blessed except for Israel’s sake….” According to Joseph Shulam, the apostle Paul “uses the metaphor of ‘grafting in’ to graphically demonstrate God’s plan to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham” (A Commentary on the Jewish Roots of Romans [Baltimore, MD: Lederer, 1997], 363, 370). ↩
• ^[15] Maurer, TDNT, 6:989; Shulam, Romans, 363, 371-73. Rom. 11:28 helps to confirm that Paul had the Patriarchs in mind. ↩
• ^[16] E.g., in ancient times, the church fathers; in this century, Karl Barth: Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, vol. 2: Die Lehre von Gott, part 2 (1942), 314 (English trans.: Church Dogmatics [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957], 285f.). ↩