On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard it. (Mark 11: 12-14)

A retrospective: Yesterday I was reading a 19th Century study of Venetian architecture. The author was discussing the sculpture representing the Fall of Man on the southwestern corner of the Doges Palace (shown above). The author called this the "Fig-tree Angle."

There is a tradition - unknown to me until yesterday - that the forbidden fruit of Genesis is the fig. This is an especially strong tradition in the oldest Talmudic texts. Both Simon bar Yochai and Nechemiah argue that the fig was the Tree of Knowledge.

If this was also the tradition of Jesus does it point to a different understanding of Mark 11? Has the Fall of Adam and Eve been overturned? Does the withering of the fig represent the power of Jesus to restore humankind to our original condition an purpose?

Previous posts on the fig tree can be accessed here.