Planting a Tree

Regular readers (hah!) will recall that a couple of weeks ago, I noted a rabbinical anecdote by Walter Kohn:

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Then, . . . [Kohn] gave a rabbinical lesson.

About 2000 years ago, there was a young farm worker in the Holy Land who was moving about the land to find work. He passed an old man planting an olive tree.

"Grandfather," he called out, "why are you planting that tree? It won't bear fruit for many years."

"All the more reason to plant now," replied the old man.
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This is the sort of parable that crosses ethnic, national, and religious boundaries. When Kohn recounted it at his talk, I was reminded of a similar story told of Martin Luther -- and I'll return to Luther in a moment -- so I decided to dig around a bit to find the origins of this story.

A true scholar always goes to the original sources.

I went to google.

I found a number of online variants. Here's one (doc file) from a Christian organization that is pretty obviously drawing on a Jewish source:

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A Rabbi was walking down a road when he came upon an old man planting an olive tree. The Rabbi stopped and asked him, "How many years will it take for the tree to bear fruit?"

The old man stopped work, straightened up his back, paused and answered him, "I think around forty years if the summers are good and the rain comes."

The Rabbi questioned him further, "And are you so fit and strong that you expect to live that long and eat its fruits?"

The old man answered, "I found a fruitful world because my forefathers planted for me, so I will do the same for my children."
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A Muslim website draws from what is obviously the same tradition but in a form that has transfered the context to Persia:

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There is a famous story of a Persian King that passed by an old man planting an olive tree. The King asked him "Will this tree benefit you? And you'll die before it comes to fruition" ( a good olive tree takes several decades to produce).

The old man replied "They planted before us and we ate, we therefore plant so others can eat."

The king was impressed and said "This tree already benefited me!" He gave the old man a reward.
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Now, let's return to Martin Luther.

I had heard a number of times that Luther is supposed to have offered this retort to those who in their millenarian fervor wanted to drop all worldly concerns and await the imminent return of Jesus:

"If I knew that Jesus would return tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today."

Online, I found a non-millenarian variant of this that has been dismissed by Luther scholar William R. Russell:

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Luther probably never said, "If I knew I was to die tomorrow, I would plant a tree today."
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Interestingly, this 'quote' has migrated to a different Martin Luther:

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"If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I would plant a tree today."

Martin Luther King Jr.
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It has also been attributed to Stephen Girard:

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"If I knew I should die tomorrow, I would plant a tree today."

Stephen Girard
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And if you don't know who Stephen Girard was, then go to this biographical site on Girard.

None of these online sources are especially scholarly, but we can at least see that the story has migrated, sometimes as a one-line remark, across all sorts of boundaries. I'll bet that if I were to dig further, I'd find that some Church Father also said it.

But there's no end of digging, just as there's no end of planting, watering, and reaping. I may not know where this tree story came from or who first planted it, but it has certainly borne a lot of fruit.