it is to be found in the Vienna Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, which also refers us to Sermon 239
Book VIII 351 come into existence, speaking with an inward and intimate truth which eye has not seen nor ear heard (I Cor 2:9), but which his Spirit surely revealed to the writer.
How to explain the tree of life and the tree ofknowledge of good and evil in an historical as well as an allegorical sense
4, 8. What comes next, certainly, and the tree of life in the middle ofParadise and the tree ofknowledge ofdiscerning good and evil (Gn 2:9), calls for more careful consideration, to avoid its forcing us into allegory and having to say that these were not real trees, but that they signify something else under the name of tree. lt is said about Wisdom, after all, that she is the tree of life to all who embrace her (Prv 3:18). However, while there is an eternal Jerusalem in the heavens, there is also the city founded on earth by which that one is signified; and although Sarah and Hagar signified the two covenants, they were also none theless two women;13 and while Christ waters us with a spiritual stream through his suffering on the tree, he was also nonetheless the rock which poured out water to a thirsty people when struck with a wooden rod, and about which it is said, now the rock was Christ ( 1 Cor 10:4). All these things stood for something other than what they were, but all the same they were themselves bodily realities. And when the narrator mentioned them he was not employing figurative language, but giving an explicit account of things which had a forward reference14 that was figurative.
So then the tree of life also was Christ, like the rock; and indeed God did not wish the man to live in Paradise without the mysteries of spiritual things being presented to him in bodily form. So then in the other trees he was provided with nourishment, in this one with a sacrament—a sign of what else but of the Wisdom of whom it is said, She is the tree of life to those who embrace her, just as it would be said of Christ that he was the rock pouring out water to those who thirsted for him? He is rightly called whatever came before him in order to signify him. He himself is the sheep which is sacrificed at the Passover;15 and yet that represented him not just by the telling, but also by actually happening. It is
13. See Gal 4:26.24; also Heb 12:22. 14. His word is praecessio, a word not given in Lewis & Short or the Oxford Latin Dictionary. But it is to be found in the Vienna Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, which also refers us to Sermon 239
1, 1 and 265,1,2 (volume H1/7 of this series); in those places its translation presented no problem, while here it is rather more unusual. 1t is first attested in Chalcidius' commentary on Plato's Timaeus, 85 and 151. 1 owe this information to Mr. Duncan Cloud, Professor Emeritus of Classics at Leicester University. The word, of course, gives us the English word "precession," which we seldom use except in connection with the equinox. The Oxford English Dictionary derives it from late Latin, but only gives a general reference to Boethius. The word does not figure in Du Cange's Glossary of Late Latin. 15. See Ex 12:3-11.