The cursing of the fig tree

Ted said:

“…if he started cursing a tree for failing to produce fruit, wouldn't you say? Or, is that an example of rational behavior in your view?”

Ted is alluding to Mt 21:18-22 (par. Mk 11:12-14).

Yes, I regard this as an example of rational behavior.

And I also regard Ted’s reaction as an example of irrational behavior.

Unbelievers like Ted dismiss the Bible as Bronze Age or Iron Age literature. But then, as a practical matter, they act as if it were addressed to 21C Americans.

They use their own contemporary culture as the hermeneutical prism through which they interpret the Bible.

Now, a rational student of the Bible, even if he didn’t believe in the Bible, would at least make a minimal effort to understand 1C Palestinian horticulture as well as the cultural code language of the audience when he came to the cursing of the fig tree.

For example, Craig Keener makes the following observation:

“At Passover season in late March or early April, fig trees are often in leaf on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives. At this time of year, such fig trees contained only green early figs (Arabs call them taqsh), which ripen around June but often drop off before that time, leaving only green leaves on the tree…A leafy tree lacking such early figs, however, would bear no figs at all that year,” A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans 1999), 504.

Notice the minute accuracy of the Synoptic account, both in time and place, viz. Nisan, the eastern side of Mt. Olivet, the two-stage fruitage of fig trees.

BTW, this favors the early dating of Matthew and Mark—or, at the very least, reliance on primitive tradition—well before the fall of Jerusalem, when the knowledge of these horticultural details would be lost.

Moreover, the cursing of the fig tree consolidates several OT motives:

1.Punitive or imprecatory miracles. A paradigm case would be the Plagues of Egypt—among other examples (e.g. Exod 14:23-31; 1 Kgs 13:1-5; 2 Kgs 1:9-12; 2:23-24; 5:27; 2 Chron 26:16-21).

2.The figurative use of fig trees as eschatological emblems in oracles of judgment (cf. Isa 5:1-7; 34:4; Jer 8:13; 24:1-10; 29:17; Hos 2:12; 9:10,16-17; Joel 1:7; Mi 7:1).

3.Enacted parables (Isa 20:1-6; Jer 13:1-11; 19:1-13; Ezk 4:1-13).

4.The spiritual significance of fruitage owing to the feast of Pentecost.

Furthermore, it also draws together several Synoptic threads:

1.Spiritual fruitfulness, or the lack thereof (Mt 3:10; 7:19).

2.Covenantal maledictions (Mt 23).

3. Parables of eschatological judgment (Mt 25).

4.The Lucan parable of the vineyard (Lk 13:6-9).

Therefore, our Lord’s action would have triggered a number of significant associations in the mind of his Jewish audience.

But if, like Ted, you get your exegesis from Bertrand Russell or the Skeptics Annotated Bible, then, of course, it will be irrational. One ignoramus learning from another.