Of Gardeners and Kings

In an essay in Temple in Antiquity, John Lundquist outlines some features of the common temple ideology of the Ancient Near East. Among these, he argues, is the tree of life, “an integral part of the ‘primordial landscape’” that temples reproduced.

From this, it was a natural conclusion to think of the priest or the as a gardener, tending the sacred tree. Lundquist quotes from Thorkild Jacobsen: “This mythical
conception receives its symbolical expression in the cult by means of a special
cult tree, planted in a grove near the sanctuary. The guardian and waterer, the
gardener and libation priest at once, is the king. He performs certain acts of
libation with the view of revivifying this tree, which is also the visible
symbol of the dying god, who is called back to life.” The king’s scepter is often envisioned as a twig or branch from the tree of life.

The Bible reflects this viewpoint in many ways: Adam the son of the divine King begins life as a tender of a garden; Noah the king of the new world plants a vineyard; the priest tends the arboreal lampstands in the tabernacle and temple, as does Jesus, as the Son of Man. Isaiah prophesies of a Davidic branch that will spring from the stump of Jesse, plausibly a branch growing from a revived tree of life, which will bring new life to David and to Israel in a “recovery of Eden.”