Why does Lehi compare the house of Israel to an olive tree?

Thomas R. Valletta

“The first mention of the olive in the Book of Mormon is found in Lehi’s prediction of the Babylonian captivity … [see 1 Nephi 10:12, 14]. In this passage, Lehi probably drew upon Zenos’s allegory, found on the plates of brass. In incredible horticultural detail, that allegory compares the house of Israel to an olive tree. Yet that Old World information was apparently lost among Lehi’s descendants in the New World. After the fifth chapter of Jacob, the olive is not mentioned again in the Book of Mormon” (Hess, “Recent Notes about Olives in Antiquity,” 115).

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