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© 2017 John D. Brey.

A unique people, whom the zoharic sages refer to as "benei meheimanuta" are discussed in the Zohar (Be-Reshit, 1:33 a). ---- Professor Daniel Matt, in the Pritzker Edition, Zohar, Vol. 1, p. 204-205, translates benei meheimanuta "scions of faith." -----As discussed in the essay Isaiah 53:2, the Hebrew word "scion" is a "branch" or "shoot" growing out of the original root-stock of a tree. The term "scion" implies something other than the original tree and its branches. The scion can be a foreign branch "grafted" onto the root-stock (after the original tree and branches are removed), or it can be an asexual clone of the root-stock growing out of the root-stock.

The passage in the Zohar (Be-Reshit, 1:33 a) grows out of Genesis 1:9-11:

. . . Let the dry land appear: and it was so.  And God called the dry land Earth. . And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding the fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself . . ..

To this verse the Zohar responds:

What is fruit tree? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, who generates fruit. Bearing fruit---the Righteous One. Of its kind---for every human being endowed with a holy spirit, fruit of that tree is signed with an insignia of its kind.

The zoharic sages play on two kinds of trees. One "generates" fruit, the other "bears," or yields fruit of its kind whose seed is (already) in it. The sages are aware that in the Hebrew text the Tree of Life is male, while the Tree of Knowledge is female. Furthermore, according to Genesis chapter 2, the seed of the Tree of Life is plural, while the seed of the Tree of Knowledge is singular. Male and female are already in the seed of the Tree of Life, i.e., its plurality, while only the female seed is in the Tree of Knowledge (its singularity). It requires the male seed to "generate" life.

The implication is that the root-stock of the original Tree in Genesis 1:11 is male/female while the Tree of Knowledge is a new genus of tree grafted onto the root-stock of the original Tree.

Genesis 1:11 doesn't distinguish between the two trees except to point out that the Tree growing out of "dry land" is a "he," a masculine, such that the KJV correctly interprets the Hebrew to say this particular Tree "yields fruit after his kind, whose fruit is in itself." The "itself" is masculine in the Hebrew so that it should read that the Tree yields his fruit that is already "in him."

The sages are aware that the "fruit tree" in Genesis 1:11 is the root-stock of all fruit that will ever come from the earth. Their phrase "scions of faith" plays on the fact that although the Tree of Knowledge is a new tree whose existence is related to the new gender in Genesis chapter 2, it's grafted onto the root-stock of the original fruit tree such that by speaking of "scions of faith" (branches born of the original root-stock through faith) the sages are ferreting out the garden metaphors in Genesis chapter one in order to unveil the mysteries of the creation of Adam and the grafting on of the phallus in association with the manufacture of Eve in Genesis 2:21.

If a new fruit tree is grafted onto the roots of the original root-stock then that tree (the one grafted on) will provide the fruit. . . But, and this is what throws the sage's excitement into the stratosphere, if the tree grafted onto the original root-stock is later cut down to the stump, and a new sprout grows, that new sprout will not produce the fruit related to the tree formerly grafted onto the original root-stock, but will produce the fruit associated with the original root-stock.

Adam's pre-Genesis 2:21 body is the original root-stock of the human race. A new fruit tree is grafted onto Adam's body when the phallus is created (San. 38b; Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith, XVII, 6.) in association with Eve's body being "built" around a cell taken from Adam's original body (Gen. 2:21).

When Abraham ritually removes the tree that’s grafted onto Adam's original root-stock in Genesis 2:21, he gives us the greatest clue to the Bible the world has ever known by making his body a ritual representation of the body of Adam prior to Genesis 2:21, which (Genesis 2:21), is where the new fruit tree is grafted onto Adam's original body: "To some degree, circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin" (Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39, 47).

A further puzzle piece is given in the sense that if Adam's body is the original root-stock of the human race, and it is, then presumably that body was capable of growing its own tree-branch, and its own fruit. If that's the case, and it is, then we have cause to suspect that the cell taken from Adam's body, around which Eve's body is "built," is a bud from the original root-stock, i.e., the ovum of Adam's original body, such that were that bud to grow as a "scion," which is to say without the germination of the new fruit tree (the testes and the phallus), that cell would produce the original fruit designed to be grown out of prelapse Adam.

The sages are implying that if a new fruit tree is grafted onto Adam's body, then everyone born after that grafting is related to the new fruit tree, beginning with that paragon of God's perfection ----the firstborn of the new tree: Cain.  They reason that anytime a fruit tree is grafted onto the root-stock only the fruit of the graft is produced. -----But, as is noted in the essay on Isaiah 53:2, if a serious stress is introduced to the new tree, say it's pruned right down to the stump (and circumcision is related to "pruning" in Jewish thought) then the original root-stock can send a "scion" or "branch" out of the original root, such that in this case the original root-stock can produce the first-fruits of the original root.

The sages of the Zohar realize that that's exactly what Abraham's circumcision is all about. Rabbi Kaplan realizes that Abraham's circumcision returns his offspring to the status of the original root-stock of the human race such that Abraham's first spiritual offspring is the true firstborn of creation, the true first-fruits of creation, in opposition to the imposter and imposture we know as the murderous Cain.

Israel represents the offspring of Adam had not the sin taken place:

If not for Adam's sin, all mankind would have had the status of Israel. . . To some degree, circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39, 47.

The Bible uses agricultural metaphors (the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge) for the express reason that in agriculture there are two ways to propagate a tree. One is sexual. One is asexual. Often times a fruit farmer will graft a fruit tree, say an orange tree, onto a more hearty tree's root-stem. Say a fruit-farmer grafts a fig tree onto an olive root. Say somewhere down the line this hybrid is given as a gift to a friend of the farmer who knows not that the fig tree is a hybrid. He plants it in his backyard until at some point he intends to go on a long term trip abroad.

Rather than let the fruit pile up and rot in his absence he cuts the tree down below the surface of the ground and buries if for dead.

When he returns many years later his jaw drops to the ground. There in his back yard, exactly where the fruit tree was cut down, he sees an absolutely beautiful olive tree growing in all its glory. He's dumbfounded. It seems miraculous. What's going on? He pruned a fig tree, cut it all the way down beneath the ground, and now it's resurrected as a hearty olive tree?

  

Adam's prelapse body is the root-stem of every circumcised member of the human race (every actual Jew). Since his body is the root of the original human race, every cell of his body is a seed. He has no sexual reproductive organ or reproductive seed since his body is the root of the human race. If you cut the roots of a tree properly they can function as asexual seeds.

You can literally grow hundreds of clones of a tree (and this kind of propagation produces a clone rather than a sexual hybrid of two different trees) merely by cutting off part of the root to use as a seed.

In Genesis 2:21, God takes cells from this root and builds a temple around them to protect them against the original sin he knows is around the corner. The Jewish sages are clear that Eve's body is "built" not "created" as a "house" (Rashi), a "temple" (beit) for Adam's flesh (so to say).

As is implied in the Talmud and Jewish midrashim, a particular tree is grafted onto Adam's body when a particular cell is taken to put into the temple that is Eve. A Gentile fruit tree, an uncircumcised penis, is added to Adam's body in Genesis 2:21. Once that fruit tree is grafted onto the hearty root of Adam's body it produces the produce we know as murder and death, best exemplified by the first fruit of that tree: Cain.

Every person born of that fruit tree is death's produce ----and thus produces death.

Jump forward to Abraham. ------ According to no less that Rabbi Samson Hirsch, correct interpretation of God's statements to Abraham suggest that he's not establishing a new covenant with Abraham, but is renewing the original covenant with prelapse Adam. . . So what does God have Abraham do to renew the original covenant with mankind? He has him cut down the tree grafted onto Adam's root in order to produce Cain; and simultaneously the produce we know as death. ----Abraham ritually removes the tree grafted onto Adam's root-stem (Gen. 2:21) and goes on about his business.

Fast forward to the cross. Jesus' disciples are under the impression Jesus is Abraham's true spiritual seed, Messiah. And yet they see him being cut down like any other tree subject to death. They see him producing the produce of the tree grafted onto Adam's body (which Abraham ritually removed)? They see Jesus as subject to the death only hybrid trees should be subject to?

After Jesus' tree is cut down to the root, and covered with earth, his disciples leave to morn and contemplate the bizarre events they’ve just witnessed. But it gets more bizarre when three days later they return to where Jesus stump was covered in earth and find not Jesus, but prelapse Adam standing before them. A perfect facsimile of pre-lapses Adam, an actual clone of Adam, stands before them?

Over the next few years and decades they realize the female body, until pollinated sexually by the tree grafted onto Adam's root-stem, is a temple with an intact veil (hymen). Hidden behind the intact veil of the Jewish temple is a small root from the body of prelapse Adam, its the seed that will birth Messiah. If that root (the unfertilized ovum) sends out a "scion" (an asexual Branch) then the Tree that grows out of that Branch is the Tree of Life whose root-stem is Adam's pre-lapse body.  

[The tree עץ] . . . achieves a high degree of independence and freedom from the earth. Vessels and channels, compacted together, form the main body of the tree---the trunk. Everything works for one aim: to form fruit, to be an עץ פרי [fruit tree]. It emerges from the earth only once; thereafter, the tree produces fruit (עושה פרי). Thus, a tree is to its fruit as the earth is to the lower forms of plant life. The latter are called האדמה פרי --- the earth must always produce them afresh, whereas the fruit of trees is called פרי העץ.

Consciously, or subconsciously, Rabbi Hirsch is relating the similarity between the Hebrew word "ground" אדםה and the Hebrew word for the "Tree of Life" אדם. -----In other words Rabbi Hirsch is explaining the uniqueness of "Adam” hidden in agricultural metaphors. In all other products of the earth, the ground, the earth itself, is their "root," while Adam is like a fruit tree whose seed is in it, rather than in the earth. Adam is a microcosm of the Earth. He achieves a high degree of independence and freedom from the earth.

All other forms of lower life are produced by the earth afresh while the fruit tree is independent of the earth: it has its seed already in it. ----As the earth is the "root" of all lower forms of life, Adam is the root of all soul life. His body is the "ground" out of which all souls will arise.

There are plants that come out of the earth as though the earth is the root and the plant is the produce ("fruit) of the earth. But then there are fruit bearing plants which are like the earth itself, i.e., the root or source of the fruit that grows out of the tree as other plants grow out of the earth. The Zohar plays on the idea of a "fruit tree" that is itself the fruit. This fruit tree, which they equate with the Tree of Life, is both root and fruit. You can eat the tree itself as you would eat the fruit of a tree that produces fruit through sexual means. 

Thus, a tree is to its fruit as the earth is to the lower forms of plant life. The latter are called האדמה פרי --- the earth must always produce them afresh, whereas the fruit of trees is called פרי העץ.

Rabbi Hirsch points out that in Genesis chapter one the fruit tree is the first sexual organism. It's the genesis of organisms that have a high degree of independence from the earth. The first plants produce through asexual vegetative reproductive mechanism rather than sexual reproductive mechanisms. Rashi notes that strict Hebrew exegesis implies there’s a fruit tree that doesn't produce fruit (but is itself the fruit) since the text adds the redundancy fruit tree "yielding fruit." Proper Hebrew grammar doesn't allow such redundancy as part of its structure. The footnote to Rashi's statement says: 

"Trees of Fruit" does not mean fruit-bearing trees, for the verse goes on to say explicitly "yielding fruit." (Mesiach Ilmin).

The Hebrew doesn't even say fruit "trees." It says fruit "tree" in the singular. There's one fruit tree, the Tree of Life, that doesn't yield fruit. It is the fruit and the root: the root and offspring (fruit).

At Genesis 1:11, Rashi exegetes the Hebrew to say, "trees of fruit yielding fruit . . .." Rashi believes the correct Hebrew interpretation is that the trees are themselves fruit, i.e., trees made of fruit, that also yield secondary fruit. Rashi says: ". . . the flavor of the tree shall be like the flavor of the fruit." ------According to Rashi the earth sinned with Adam by not making the tree taste the same as the fruit it yields. The note to Rashi’s interpretation at Genesis 3:17 says: “Rashi to 1:11 above said that the earth was later punished along with man for not producing trees whose wood had the same taste as its fruit, as God had commanded it.”

Rabbi Hirsch spends six pages on the concept in the cross-hairs of Genesis 1:11. He points out that:

All plant substances and energies operate within specific and fixed limits; the form of each plant crystallizes into a specific and predetermined form. This great law, which is made manifest to us in the plant world, governs everything----from the cedar to the hyssop; it rules in minute fibers and seedlings, even as in giant trees that reach toward the skies. All-pervading and all-embracing, this law allows each individual plant species to develop only within the limits set for it. . . "According to its species!" 

Hirsch Chumash at Genesis 1:11.

The statement above points out the fact that every organism must stay within the boundaries of its own species. This emphasis segues with Rashi's claim that the original sin of the man, Adam, was related to the fact that the tree, made of fruit, tasted different than the fruit produced as a secondary product of the tree. Implicit in his exegesis and interpretation is the idea that the tree made of fruit is producing a species of fruit different than the fruit the tree is made of: the law of remaining within one's own species is broken in the first sin of the man, whose sin is being reflected in the tree producing fruit different, a hybrid, of the Tree itself. 

These mitzvos warn us to keep this law also in regards our own species, to impose the law God has given us also upon our own drives and energies. . . He has made us human beings in the midst of all other living things and He made us Jews in the midst of mankind; and He has set down for both man and Jew the law governing the development of their lives.

According to the rationales Rabbi Hirsch is employing, Jews are a species of humankind who must follow the same law that denies any other species from leaving the boundaries of its own kind. The drives and energies that tempt a Jew to marry a non-Jew, to have sex with a non-Jew, to mix species, must be rejected. 

The purity of man in the human species and the purity of the Jew in the family of Israel depends on the observance of these restrictions. The higher the species rises, the more circumscribed does its sexual life become, the narrower are the limits set on marital choices. . . Any disregard of the laws of the species brings disaster on the species; sexual lawlessness destroys individuals and nations, whereas observance of the restrictions on sexual life is fundamental for the enoblement of the human species.

All of these statements and concepts are being discussed by Rabbi Hirsch in the immediate context of Genesis 1:11 where Rashi speaks of the tree of fruit not tasting like the fruit of the tree. Any sexual assault on the law of remaining faithful to the original specie as designed and defined by God brings disaster on the species and destroys individuals and nations. Adam was created without gender. Adam was created a Jew. A Jew being a non-gendered mammal. Adam was both the root of the human tree and the fruit of the human tree: the root and offspring all in one.

At the original sin, Adam destroys individuals and nations: the cross-breeding of trees in order to change the fruit at the expense of the sanctity of the tree: 

. . . Unlawful crossing of species is not required to improve the fruit. After all, man has yet to produce from hybrid seed a tree that improves the original fruit tree. We must ask ourselves, then, whether the "improvement of the fruit" merely degenerates the species of trees.

All the evil of cross-breeding, all the evil of manipulating speciation as originally designed by God, takes place in Genesis 2:21, which is the harbinger and the archetype of the original sin and leads to the conception of Cain as the destructive murderer from whose status as the firstborn of hybrid-humanity all mankind acquire its evil-inclination, which didn't exist in Adam as the tree of fruit whose body and whose fruit tasted the same. Cain is the personification of the evil-inclination that’s born of Adam's "desire" to cross-breed with the animals. When a suitable mate wasn't found, cross-breeding, and the grafting of one kind onto the root of another took place for the first time leading to the original sin.

Rashi and Rabbi Hirsch are perfectly aware that Genesis chapter one and two use agricultural metaphors to speak of the nature of the original sin of Adam. Adam's body is both the root (earth) and the fruit, scion, growing out of the earth. As the earth puts forth vegetative (asexual) fruit, Adam's body was designed to put forth shoots or branches, scions, that would be identical clones (as all scions are) to Adam's own flesh. The text clearly relates an episode of cross-breading whereby Adam's asexual body, an asexual root, like the earth, is redesigned in order to produce fruit that's not a clone, doesn't taste identical, to Adam's body.

We need neither world-class biologists nor expert horticulturists to realize precisely what Rashi and Rabbi Hirsch can't bring themselves to say out loud, but can't not at least whisper if they're going to exegete the word of God faithfully. Adam was originally, as were all plants, asexual. ------Only through cross-breading, and redesign, did asexual plants become sexualized organisms. It was precisely this sexual redesigning that caused what is otherwise, in every case, a clone of the mother plant (a "scion" that's genetically identical to the mother organism), to become genetically distinct, different, to taste different, a hybrid, rather than remaining a clone of the original root.