Which style of tree did Zacchaeus actually climb?

20 April is the feast day of Zacchaeus of Jericho. We all know the account of Zacchaeus climbing a tree to see Jesus. However, it seems to not have been a sycamore tree in any respect. This is the story …

Story of Zacchaeus

Zacchaeus is the Greek version of the Jewish name ‘Zaccai’ present in Ezra 2:9 and Nehemiah 7:14. The story of Zacchaeus is barely recorded in Luke 19:1–10 and is well-known to Sunday School children. The story pertains to an encounter when Jesus visited the town of Jericho. While Jesus was in Jericho, a neighborhood tax collector called Zacchaeus wanted to satisfy him. Being a brief man, Zacchaeus couldn’t see Jesus through the group, so he climbed a tree. Jesus spotted him after which invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house for tea. This event horrified most of the Jewish people because tax collectors were disliked for collaborating with the occupying Roman authorities, and so they were considered corrupt. However, on this story, Zacchaeus repented of exploiting the people. He became a reformed man and offered to pay back greater than he had defrauded people of.

Source

The detail on this story, akin to using the name of the person and describing the precise style of tree, indicates that that is one among the eyewitness accounts collected by Luke (Luke 1:2). Luke seems to have either got this story from Zacchaeus himself or, if not, from someone who was there on the time.

Jericho

Jericho was a town of Judea on the west bank of the River Jordan and is claimed to be the oldest repeatedly inhabited settlement on the planet. Jericho is on the sting of the Dead Sea valley, over eight hundred feet below sea level. It is an oasis, where spring water has irrigated the realm for 1000’s of years. Jericho was known for its orchards, which grew trees akin to fig trees, date palms, and olive trees. In Deuteronomy 34:3, Jericho was called the ‘city of palms’, so for Luke to notice the precise style of tree which Zacchaeus climbed is critical.

Gathering under trees

In the nice and cozy climate of the Middle East, trees also provided shade. Trees lined roads for shade, and other people would gather under some large ones. The idea of gathering under a tree for a gathering is present in many cultures.

In the village of Tolpuddle near Dorchester in Dorset, in southern England, there may be an ancient sycamore tree where, in 1833, local farm employees met to debate conditions and agreed to go on strike. These men are actually generally known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. They are considered the beginning of the British trade union movement. The Tolpuddle sycamore tree is now managed by the National Trust and has a plaque on it to inform the story. Something similar happened in Jericho. People gathered under a big tree – not a cultivated one in an orchard, but one within the town.

Sycamore trees

The word ‘sycamore’ has been applied to several sorts of trees which have similar leaf forms. The name derives from the traditional Greek συκόμορος (sūkomoros). In fact, there are various distinct species of trees generally known as ‘sycamore’ world wide.

The style of sycamore known within the British Isles is known as in Latin ‘Acer pseudoplatanus’. It can also be called the Eurasian maple or the nice maple and is a style of maple tree which grows natively in central Europe and southwestern Asia. It has been known within the British Isles for no less than five centuries, and British settlers have taken it to North America, Australia, and New Zealand. In the USA, it’s generally known as the sycamore maple. It will not be found natively within the Middle East. Rather, it seems to have gotten the name ‘sycamore’ by analogy to the Bible story, and never since it was the style of tree Zacchaeus went up.

More confusingly, in North America, the tree normally generally known as a ‘sycamore’, or American sycamore, is one other tree called in Latin ‘Platanus occidentalis’, also called the eastern sycamore, which is a style of plane tree native to the eastern USA. Another style of tree, ‘Platanus racemosa’, present in the western USA, is generally known as the western sycamore. There are also trees generally known as sycamore in Australia, where there may be the silver sycamore, the white sycamore, the satin sycamore, the pink sycamore, and the mountain sycamore.

None of those sycamore trees grew within the Middle East on the time of Jesus.

Fig trees within the Bible

The style of tree referred to within the story of Zacchaeus will not be a maple tree, nor a plane tree, but as an alternative a style of fig tree.

There are two sorts of fig tree which appear within the Bible. The fig gets an early mention when Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves as their first garments (Genesis 3:7), where the aim is usually recommended by the form of the leaf. The fig tree can also be mentioned in Song of Solomon 2:13 and Matthew 24:32.

The Good News Study Bible explains that the cultivated fig, called in Latin ‘Ficus carica’, or the true fig, “is grown for its fruit, to not be confused with the ‘Ficus sycomorus’, or sycomore-fig … grown for its hard wood.”

The wild fig is present in the Middle East, Ethiopia, and far of eastern Africa. In East Africa, it is thought by its Swahili name, the mukuyu tree. The wild fig’s extensive root system helps to stop soil erosion and maintains soil fertility. It provides shade for people and animals. It has clustered, button-like fruit that are edible, nevertheless it will not be the style of fig which is normally cultivated; somewhat, it grows wild and was quite common.

In Hebrew, it is known as שקמה (shikmah), which was rendered in Greek as συκόμορος (sūkomoros). King Solomon tried to make cedars as common as wild figs (1 Kings 10:27), and Isaiah contrasts cedars and wild figs (Isaiah 9:10). Psalm 78:47 explains that wild figs and vines were destroyed within the Egyptian plagues. The prophet Amos refers to his secondary occupation as a dresser of fig trees (Amos 7:14). In the New Testament, in Luke 19:4, that is the style of tree which Zacchaeus goes up. This style of tree has a sturdy trunk, a broad cover, strong wood, and low, wide-spreading branches, making it relatively easy to climb, even for a brief person like Zacchaeus.

Jericho today

To at the present time, there may be a house in Jericho which, by tradition, was Zacchaeus’s house. There is even a tree in Jericho reputed to be the very one which Zacchaeus climbed – in reality, there are two of them. They have each been places of pilgrimage for hundreds of years, and each trees are of the sort ‘Ficus sycomorus’, which is the wild fig. Whether either of those is the precise tree is unprovable, nevertheless it does show which style of tree the locals have understood it to be because the early centuries of the Christian era.

Bible translations

The tree is barely mentioned in Luke 19:4. The New King James Version (NKJV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the Contemporary English Version (CEV), the English Standard Version (ESV), the NET Bible, and another translations misleadingly have “sycamore tree”. In most readers’ minds, this may conjure up a picture of a maple tree for British people, or a plane tree for Americans. The tradition of it being a sycamore tree comes from the King James Version (KJV), which had “sicomore tree” within the 1611 edition and “sycomore tree” within the 1769 edition, being a transliteration of the Greek somewhat than a translation of the tree type.

Some translations, just like the Revised English Bible (REB), follow the KJV and spell it “sycomore” as a transliteration of the Greek, which is barely higher than “sycamore”—but only just. Even spelling it “sycomore tree” (with an o), as an alternative of “sycamore” (with an a), is a subtlety lost on most readers. In any case, the spelling difference is lost when the verse is heard when read aloud in church or listened to on audio.

A couple of translations do call it a fig tree. The latest version of the New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT) are barely more helpful with “sycamore-fig”.

Translations into German, starting with Luther, are inclined to call it a Maulbeerbaum (mulberry tree) or a Maulbeerfeigenbaum (mulberry-fig tree). Some European languages which followed Luther’s translation use the equivalent of “mulberry”. In English, the 1903 New Testament in Modern Speech by R. F. Weymouth had “mulberry tree”, as did the Translators’ New Testament produced by the Bible Society in 1973.

The first man to translate the New Testament from Greek into English was William Tyndale in 1526. In his 1526 translation, he had “sicomore tree”, but later he learnt Hebrew and wrote that he could “consider the Hebrew phrase or manner of speech left within the Greek words”. When he revised his New Testament, published in 1534, he wrote that Zacchaeus ascended “right into a wilde fygge tree”. This became “a wilde figge tree” within the Geneva Bible, or “wild fig” in modern spelling. Almost five hundred years later, “wild fig” still looks like essentially the most helpful translation of all of them and shows Tyndale’s genius.

Very few modern English Bibles render it as a fig tree, but just a few have broken away from the tradition of calling it a sycamore tree. The 1989 Jewish New Testament by David H. Stern has “fig tree”, as does the EasyEnglish version from MissionAssist, and the Passion Translation has “blossoming fig tree”.

Conclusion

People have grown up with the image of Zacchaeus climbing a sycamore tree. Children’s books and stained-glass windows feature him in a sycamore tree, looking down from a high branch, and that is the image most individuals have. The problem is that sycamore trees don’t grow within the Middle East. Instead, Zacchaeus was sitting on a lower branch of a wild fig tree.

This misunderstanding has been fuelled by centuries of misleading Bible translations in Luke 19:4, which created a practice. It is so fixed in people’s minds that they’re surprised to search out it’s incorrect.

Does it matter? On one hand, it does not likely matter what style of tree Zacchaeus went up. However, however, that is just one among many examples within the Scriptures where people have false assumptions or misunderstandings based upon tradition, often without realising it. When catalogued together, these can distort the view of the story. It is one among many examples of how false ideas can develop into fixed in our minds about what’s within the Bible, especially in the event that they are commonly repeated and form a part of our tradition.