Grafting

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

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.

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

The Greek word used (ἐγκεντρίζω) has two distinct meanings: (1) ‘goad’ or ‘spur on’ (cf.  Acts 26:14, ‘It is hard for thee to kick against the goad [κέντρον]),’ and (2) ‘inoculate’ or ‘graft.’ The English word ‘graff’ is derived from the Gr. γράφειν, ‘to write,’ and means a slip of a cultivated tree inserted into a wild one, so called because of its resemblance to a pencil. In the NT the word occurs only in  Romans 11:17-24 : St. Paul here follows the Prophets (cf.  Jeremiah 11:16) in likening Israel to an olive tree (cf. articleOlive). Its roots are the Patriarchs, the original branches are the Jews, and the branches of the wild olive which have been grafted in are the Gentile Christians. Some of the original branches have been broken off owing to their lack of faith, and by a wholly unnatural process shoots from a wild olive have been grafted into the cultivated stock. But this is no ground for self-adulation: all the blessings which the Gentiles derive come from the original stock into which they have been grafted through no merit of their own; let them beware, therefore, lest through pride and want of faith they also are cut off, for it would, on the one hand, be a much less violent proceeding to cut off the wild branches; which have been grafted in, than it was to cut off the original branches: while, on the other hand, it would be far easier and far more natural to graft the original cultivated branches back into the stock on which they grew than it was to graft the Gentiles, who are merely a slip cut from a wild olive, in amongst the branches of the cultivated olive. The olive, like most fruit trees, requires a graft from a cultivated tree if the fruit is to be of any value. A graft from a wild tree inserted into a cultivated stock would of course be useless, and such a process is never performed; hence the point of St. Paul’s comparison.

Literature.-Sanday-Headlam, Romans 5 ( International Critical Commentary , 1902), pp. 319-330; Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 257f.; Encyclopaedia Biblica 3496; Hastings’ Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible , p. 314; J. C. Geikie, The Holy Land and the Bible , 1903, p. 50; W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book , 1910, p. 33.

P. S. P. Handcock.