Gripla - 2022, Page 334

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(also called the Oil of Mercy) in order that he may live longer. Seth agrees
to go as he asks and bids his father to tell him the way. Adam tells Seth
to go eastward, where he will find a set of black and grassless footsteps (a
result of their sin), which are tracks left from when he and Eve walked out
of Paradise. Seth finds the way and comes to the gates of Paradise, where
he meets an angel, who tells him to look inside and describe what he sees.
He looks in and sees beautiful flowers and fruits and, in the middle of
Paradise, their irrigative source, a spring from which four rivers flow: the
Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.
Next to the spring is an apple tree, which is black and without bark,
reminding Seth of his parents’ footsteps out of Paradise.13 Seth tells the
angel what he saw, and the angel asks him to look in a second time. This
time Seth sees a snake twisted around the trunk of the same tree. Seth
describes what he sees, and the angel asks Seth to look in a third time.
This time, the apple tree is incredibly tall, reaching up to the heavens, and
on top of it sits a baby in swaddling clothes. Seth looks down and sees
the roots of the tree reach deep into hell, where he sees the soul of his
brother Abel. He tells the angel a third time what he has seen. The angel
explains to Seth that the baby he saw is Christ, who will be the Oil of Life
for all humankind, indicating that he will not receive the oil that day for
his father, for it will come later in the form of Christ. Before Seth leaves
Paradise, the angel gives him three seeds from the apple of which Adam
and Eve ate. The angel tells Seth to put them in the mouth of his father
Adam after he dies, for from them will grow three great trees: one cypress,
one pine, and one cedar, which represent the trinity, three unique species
stemming from the same source. Adam dies, Seth does as he was asked,
and three trees grow from Adam’s corpse.
In some texts, the Cross follows after this portion of the legend. This
material that has been amalgamated with the Quest tends to vary greatly.
Generally, it tells of the finding of the three trees (sometimes one tree,
13 This image is often tied to “the dry tree” motif. For an overview, see M. R. Bennett, “The
Legend of the Green Tree and the Dry,” Archaeological Journal 83.1 (1926): 21–32; Rose
Jeffries Peebles, “The Dry Tree: Symbol of Death,” Vassar Medieval Studies, ed. by C. F.
Fiske (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923) 57–79; Rosanne Gasse, “The Dry Tree
Legend in Medieval Literature,” Fifteenth Century Studies 38 (2013): 65–96; and Eleanor
Simmons Greenhill, “The Child in the Tree: A Study of the Cosmological Tree in Christian
Tradition,” Traditio 10 (1954): 323–71.