The Tree of Life in Jewish Iconography

There is scarcely any symbol more ancient or more widely distributed than that of the cosmic Tree of Life with its promise of immortality and everlasting youth-a remarkable product of Semitic imagination in Western Asia. With the exception of the Cross of Christ, which is itself an embodiment of the Tree of Life in another form, no other symbol has been the subject of so much published research. The theme has proved so attractive that, apart from frequent excursions in works of a more general nature, twelve monographs have been devoted to it within the relatively short space of seventeen years.1