Now in this same passage of Mark I found the following: “Whosoever shall say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted and thrown into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart but believes in that very moment that what he says is happening, it shall be unto him.” Luke also elsewhere had, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye would say to this sycamine-tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would have obeyed you.” I took for granted that “mountain,” “mustard-seed,” and “sycamine-tree,” must all have been metaphorically used. Scaurus confirmed this view, saying that the Jews were in the habit of calling a learned interpreter of the Law an uprooter of mountains, _i.e._ of spiritual obstacles blocking the path of the students of the law. But then he added something that amazed me, “Matthew has, ‘If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do the deed of the fig-tree, but even if ye say to this mountain, Be lifted and thrown into the sea, it shall come to pass.’ Now, ‘mountain’ being metaphorical, you might naturally anticipate that Matthew intended ‘fig-tree’ to be metaphorical. But if you look back a little, you will find that _Matthew actually imagines that there was a literal fig-tree in question_. So does Mark. He and Matthew turn the metaphor into a literal miracle, as follows. “In the first place, Jesus comes to a literal fig-tree, seeking literal fruit. He finds none. Consequently, say Mark and Matthew, a curse of barrenness was pronounced on it by Jesus. What followed? The tree was at once ‘dried up,’ or (according to Mark) ‘dried up from the roots.’ Now first note that the Hebrew word that means ‘barren’ means also ‘_root up_,’ ‘_cut off_,’ or ‘_cut down_.’ Then pass to Luke. He omits the whole of this _miracle_ about a fig-tree. But he has a _parable_ about a fig-tree. The Lord of a vineyard comes to a barren fig-tree, and gives orders that it shall be ‘_cut down_.’ The vinedresser intercedes for it that it may be spared for one year more in case it may bear fruit.”