Like why would Jesus do that to a tree it seems counterproductive
Ok - dealing with Matthew 21:18-22 & it’s parallel in Mark 11:12-25.
This is the only destructive miracle done by Jesus in any canonical gospel. Only in Thomas and other gnostic texts is destruction attributed to Jesus - the only direct parallel being Thomas III:1-3 in which the boy Jesus causes another boy to wither up instantly by saying “you will wither like a tree”…
I’m going to start with Mark because it actually makes more sense. Mark uses the story of the fig tree as an inclusio (bracket) around the story of the cleansing of the temple. It is used as an interpretive cue. The tree in this case is a literary device representing Israel, of which the temple is the heart. The implication being that neither tree, nor temple, nor people are bearing fruit, tree is cursed, the temple is cleansed, the people are called to repent, believe and work toward the empire of God (and against empires of man).
Matthew writes with a copy of Mark in hand, but works really hard to spiritualize the story - as opposed to Luke who makes everything political or economic. Matthew places it after the cleansing of the temple and makes it about the power of prayer and the need to not hesitate - a check of the Greek reveals that “do not doubt” is a bad translation it is “do not hesitate”.
The commentaries caution that you should not mistake this as saying that if you pray hard enough you get whatever you want, nor that you can use prayer to destroy trees or enemies, nor that only perfect faith/prayer is acceptable to God.
It still feels like a dick move… I think I must be missing something… I’m going to keep working on this one and I’ll update this post if I find more satisfying answers.
In the meantime, do any of my wise conversation partners have any insight on this particular pericope?
