Tree of Life, Tree of Healing - a podcast by PDF feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Abstract: The late Hebrew scholar John Tvedtnes takes readers on a grand tour of Jewish and Christian stories and traditions that attest to the Tree of Life as not only a means to prolong life, but also to impart a healing power to individuals and to the earth itself. In a future day, it is said that the Saints will eat of its sweet fruit forever.



[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See John Tvedtnes, “Tree of Life, Tree of Healing,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 495–520. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]





This is a tree which is a Tree of Life, And a Vine, a Vine of Life! Satisfying (fare) that is superior to all means of healing is that which thou hast brought, revealed and given to these souls! (Mandaean Prayerbook 375)1



The tree of life appears in both the first and last books of the Christian Bible. In the Genesis account, God removes Adam and Eve from the garden so they cannot eat the fruit of the tree of life (Gen. 3:22–24). In the book of Revelation, the tree’s fruit becomes available in the last days [Page 172]to all who obey the Lord (Rev. 2:7; 22:14). Both texts declare that the tree is “in the midst [middle] of the garden” (Gen. 2:9) or “in the midst of the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).

Genesis 3:22 recounts how the first couple, after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, became like God in being able to distinguish good and evil, and that, had they been able to eat the fruit of the tree of life, they would also have become immortal.2 This is the earliest biblical mention of the tree as a means of prolonging life. The last such reference is in Revelation 22:1–2, where John describes the new Jerusalem descending from heaven, noting that “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2) and that its presence on earth would abolish death and pain (Rev. 21:4). This healing power is the subject of this paper.

Adam’s Illness

The pseudepigraphic Gospel of Nicodemus 3 (19) notes that, when Adam was on his deathbed, he sent his son Seth to procure oil from the tree of life with which to anoint him that he might “arise from his sickness.”3 An angel appeared to Seth and asked him, “Do you desire, because of the sickness of your father, the oil that raises up the sick, or the tree from which flows such oil?” He told Seth to go to his father and tell him “that after the completion of 5,500 years from the creation of the world, the only-begotten Son of God shall become man and shall descend below the earth. And he shall anoint him with that oil [from the garden of Eden]. And he shall arise and wash him and his descendants with water and t...

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