xvii. 6), Fritzsche is more correct in expressing the view of the

Evangelists quite generally, thus: Jesus used his displeasure at the unfruitfulness of the tree, as an occasion for performing a miracle, the object of which was merely the general one of all his miracles, namely to attest his Messiahship. [1526] Hence Euthymius speaks entirely in the spirit of the narrators, as described by Fritzsche, [1527] when he forbids all investigation into the special end of the action, and exhorts the reader only to look at it in general as a miracle. [1528] But it by no means follows from hence that we too should refrain from all reflection on the subject, and believingly receive the miracle without further question; on the contrary, we cannot avoid observing, that the particular miracle which we have now before us, does not admit of being explained as a real act of Jesus, either upon the general ground of performing miracles, or from any peculiar object or motive whatever. Far from this, it is in every respect opposed both to his theory and his prevailing practice, and on this account, even apart from the question of its physical possibility, must be pronounced more decidedly, than any other, to be such a miracle as Jesus cannot really have performed.

It is incumbent on us, however, to adduce positive proof of the existence of such causes as, even without historical foundation, might give rise to a narrative of this kind. Now in our usual source, the Old Testament, we do, indeed, find many figurative discourses and narratives about trees, and fig-trees in particular; but none which has so specific an affinity to our narrative, that we could say the latter is an imitation of it. But we need not search long in the New Testament, before we find, first in the mouth of the Baptist (Matt. iii. 10), then in that of Jesus (vii. 19), the apothegm of the tree, which, because it bears no good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire; and further on (Luke xiii. 6 ff.) this theme is dilated into the fictitious history of a man who for three years in vain seeks for fruit on a fig-tree in his vineyard, and on this account determines to cut it down, but that the gardener intercedes for another year’s respite. It was already an idea of some fathers of the church, that the cursing of the fig-tree was only the parable of the barren fig-tree carried out into action. [1529] It is true that they held this opinion in the sense of the explanation before cited, namely, that Jesus himself, as he had previously exhibited the actual condition and the approaching catastrophe of the Jewish people in a figurative discourse, intended on the occasion in question to represent them by a symbolical action; which, as we have seen, is inconceivable. Nevertheless, we cannot help conjecturing, that we have before us one and the same theme under three different modifications: first, in the most concentrated form, as an apothegm; then expanded into a parable; and lastly realized as a history. But we do not suppose that what Jesus twice described in words, he at length represented by an action; in our opinion, it was tradition which converted what it met with as an apothegm and a parable into a real incident. That in the real history the end of the tree is somewhat different from that threatened in the apothegm and parable, namely, withering instead of being cut down, need not amount to a difficulty. For had the parable once become a real history, with Jesus for its subject, and consequently its whole didactic and symbolical significance passed into the external act, then must this, if it were to have any weight and interest, take the form of a miracle, and the natural destruction of the tree by means of the axe must be transformed into an immediate withering on the word of Jesus. It is true that there seems to be the very same objection to this conception of the narrative which allows its inmost kernel to be symbolical, as to the one above considered; namely, that it is contravened by the words of Jesus which are appended to the narrative. But on our view of the gospel histories we are warranted to say, that with the transformation of the parable into a history, its original sense also was lost, and as the miracle began to be regarded as constituting the pith of the matter, that discourse on miraculous power and faith, was erroneously annexed to it. Even the particular circumstance that led to the selection of the saying about the removal of the mountain for association with the narrative of the fig-tree, may be shown with probability. The power of faith, which is here represented by an effectual command to a mountain: Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, is elsewhere (Luke xvii. 6) symbolized by an equally effectual command to a species of fig-tree (συκάμινος): Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea. Hence the cursing of the fig-tree, so soon as its withering was conceived to be an effect of the miraculous power of Jesus, brought to mind the tree or the mountain which was to be transported by the miraculous power of faith, and this saying became appended to that fact. Thus, in this instance, praise is due to the third gospel for having preserved to us the parable of the barren συκῆ, and the apothegm of the συκάμινος to be transplanted by faith, distinct and pure, each in its original form and significance; while the two other synoptists have transformed the parable into a history, and have misapplied the apothegm (in a somewhat altered form) to a false explanation of that pretended history. [1530]