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Bible Dictionaries
Grafting
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or GRAFTING . In olive-culture grafting is universal. When the sapling is about seven years old it is cut down to the stem, and a shoot from a good tree is grafted upon it. Three years later it begins to bear fruit, its produce gradually increasing until about the fourteenth year. No tree under cultivation is allowed to grow ungrafted; the fruit in such case being inferior. Grafting is alluded to only once in Scripture ( Romans 11:17 etc.). St. Paul compares the coming in of the Gentiles to the grafting of a wild olive branch upon a good olive tree: a process ‘contrary to nature.’ Nowack ( Heb. Arch . i. 238) says that Columelia’s statement that olive trees are rejuvenated and strengthened in this way (see Comm. on Romans , by Principal Brown and Godet, ad loc. ), is not confirmed. Sanday-Headlam say ( ICC [Note: CC International Critical Commentary.] on ‘Romans,’ p. 328): ‘Grafts must necessarily be branches from a cultivated olive inserted into a wild stock, the reverse process being one which would be valueless, and is never performed.’ ‘The ungrafted tree,’ they say, ‘is the natural or wild olive,’ following Tristram, Nat. Hist. of the Bible , 371 377. Prof. Theobald Fischer inclines to view the olive and the wild olive as distinct species; in this agreeing with some modern botanists ( Der Ölbaum , 4 f.), a contrary opinion being held by others (p. 5). Sir William Ramsay, Expositor , vi. ix. [1905], 154 ff., states grounds on which the oleaster ( Eleagnus angustifotia ) may be regarded as the plant intended. This is the type to which the cultivated olive tends to revert through centuries of neglect, as seen, e.g. , in Cyrenaica. (Prof. Fischer does not admit this [ Der Ölbaum , 69].) When grafted with a shoot of the nobler tree it gives rise to the true olive. But the two are clearly distinguished by size, shape, and colour of leaves and character of fruit.
No one could mistake the oleaster for the olive; but the case is not clear enough to justify Ramsay in calling the oleaster the wild olive ( Expositor, ut supra , 152). Dr. W. M. Thomson, whose accuracy Ramsay commends, citing him in favour of his own view ( ib. 154), is really a witness on the other side, quite plainly holding that the wild olive is the ungrafted tree ( LB [Note: B The Land and the Book.] iii. 33 ff.); and this is the universal view among olive growers in modern Palestine. The fruit of the wild olive is acrid and harsh, containing little oil.
Prof. Fischer states that in Palestine it is still ‘customary to re-invigorate an olive tree which is ceasing to bear fruit, by grafting it with a shoot of wild olive, so that the sap of the tree ennobles this wild shoot, and the tree now again begins to bear fruit’ ( Der Ölbaum , 9). He gives no authority. Ramsay accepts the statement without question ( Expositor, ut supra , 19), and the value of his subsequent discussion rests upon the assumption of its truth. The assumption is precarious. The present writer can find no evidence that such an operation is ever performed. In response to inquiries made in the main olive-growing districts of Palestine, he is assured that it is never done; and that, for the purpose indicated, it would be perfectly futile.
Sanday-Headlam seem rightly to apprehend the Apostle’s meaning. It is not their view that St. Paul proves a spiritual process credible ‘because it resembles a process impossible in and contrary to external nature’ (Ramsay, ib. 26 f.). He exhorts the Gentiles to humility, because God in His goodness has done for them in the spiritual sphere a thing which they had no reason to expect, since it, according to Sanday-Headlam, never, according to Ramsay, very seldom, is done in the natural. The language of St. Paul is justified in either case: it might be all the more effective if the former were true. Mr. Baring Gould’s inference as to the Apostle’s ignorance only illustrates his own blindness ( Study of St. Paul , p. 275). See also art. Olive.
W. Ewing.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Grafting'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/g/grafting.html. 1909.
