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Thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life)... -- Deuteronomy 20:19
From the earliest times, trees have been the focus of religious life of many peoples around
the world. As the largest plant on earth, the tree has been a major source of stimulation to
the mythic imagination. Trees have been invested in all cultures with a dignity unique to
their own nature, and tree cults, in which a single tree or a grove of trees is worshipped,
have flourished at different times almost everywhere. Even today there are sacred woods
in India and Japan, just as there were in pre-Christian Europe. An elaborate mythology of
trees exists across a broad range of ancient cultures.
-- Sacred Places: Trees and the Sacred, Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe
In Jewish and Christian mythology, a tree sits at the center of both the Heavenly and Earthly Edens. The Norse cosmic World Ash, Ygdrassil, has its roots in the underworld while its branches support the abode of the Gods. The Egyptian's Holy Sycamore stood on the threshold of life and death, connecting the worlds. To the Mayas, it is Yaxche, whose branches support the heavens.
The tree has other characteristics which lend easily to symbolism. Many trees take on the appearance of death in the winter- losing their leaves, only to sprout new growth with the return of spring. This aspect makes the tree a symbol of resurrection, and a stylized tree is the symbol of many resurrected Gods- Jesus, Attis, and Osirus all have crosses as their symbols. Most of these Gods are believed to have been crucified on trees, as well. The modern Christmas tree hearkens back to trees decorated to honor Attis, the crucified God of the Greeks.
A tree also bears seeds or fruits, which contain the essence of the tree, and this continuous regeneration is a potent symbol of immortality. It is the fruit of a tree that confers immortality in the Jewish creation story. In Taoist tradition, it is a divine peach that gives the gift of immortality. In ancient Persia, the fruit of the haoma bears this essence. The apples of Idun give the Norse gods their powers, much like the Gods of the Greek pantheon and their reliance on Ambrosia.
This aspect of the tree as a giver of gifts and spiritual wisdom is also quite common. It is while meditating under a Bodhi tree that Buddha received his enlightenment; the Norse God Odin received the gift of language while suspended upside down in the World Ash (an interesting parallel is the hanged man of the tarot). In Judeo-Christian mythology, the Tree of heaven is the source of the primordial rivers that water the earth- similar to the Tooba Tree of the Koran, from whose roots spring milk, honey, and wine.
The tree as the abode of the Gods is another feature common to many mythologies; in some, the tree itself is a God. The ancient Sumerian God Dammuzi was personified as a tree, as is the Hindu Brahman. The Byzantine World tree represents the omnipotence of the Christian god.
Another form, the inverted Tree, represents spiritual growth, as well as the human nervous system. This tree, with its roots in heaven, and its branches growing downward, is most commonly found in Kabbalistic imagery. A similar tree is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, "The banyan tree with its roots above, and its branches below, is imperishable." In Jewish Kabbalah, the inverted tree represents the nervous system as well- the 'root' in the cranial nerves, with the branches spreading throughout the body; it also represents the cosmic tree- rooted in heaven, the branches all of manifest creation.
-- About.com
In Celtic polytheism the word druid denotes the priestly class in ancient Celtic societies, which existed through much of Western Europe north of the Alps and in the British Isles until they were supplanted by Roman government and, later, Christianity. Druidic practices were part of the culture of all the tribal peoples called "Keltoi" and "Galatai" by Greeks and "Celtae" and "Galli" by Romans, which evolved into modern English "Celtic" and "Gaulish". They combined the duties of priest, arbitrator, healer, scholar, and magistrate.
The Druids were polytheists, but also deified elements of nature, such as the sun, the moon, and the stars, looking to them for "signs and seasons". They also venerated other natural elements, such as the oak, certain groves, tops of hills, streams, lakes and even plants, especially mistletoe and holly.
-- Wikipedia.com
The Druids believed that mistletoe grew in places which had been struck by lightning. The Druids performed rituals and ceremonies in groves of sacred oak trees, and believed that the interior of the oak was the abode of the dead. In India, it is believed that the Brahma Daitya, the ghosts of brahmans, live in the fig trees, the pipal (ficus religiosa), or the banyan (ficus indica), awaiting liberation or reincarnarnation. Among the eight or so species of tree considered sacred in India, these two varieties of fig are the most highly venerated.
-- Sacred Places: Trees and the Sacred, Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe
The King James Version of the Bible mentions thirty-seven differently named trees. Some species, such as cypress, shittah, ash, and teil, appear only once. Others, notably the palm, olive, fig, and cedar, occur many times.
This version was completed in 1611, long before botany became an exact science. It was a translation by many brilliant scholars, who were not botanists, and chose to identify some of the trees of the bible with familiar plants of England. This may have been done to assist our greater understanding of the scriptures.
Consequently, the terebinth was called an elm or a teil, aspens were called mulberries, a mulberry was called "sycamine, " a species of fig was called "sycomore. " The Oriental planetree, related to the sycamore, was called a chestnut. The apricot became an apple, and the native Aleppo pine was called a fir or even, in Isaiah 44:14, an ash. The words fir, pine, cypress, juniper, and sometimes the cedar, are so used that it is almost impossible to determine what trees are referred to in certain passages.
In Isaiah 6:13 is the phrase: as a teil tree, and as an oak. Teil is an obsolete English name for the linden or lime tree, related to our basswood, which is not native in Palestine. Undoubtedly, this passage refers to the Terebinth, a good-sized deciduous tree that is common on the dry lower slopes of hills in the Holy Land. All parts of the Terebinth contain a fragrant resinous juice and turpentine is obtained from slashes made on the trunk and branches.
In Genesis 6:14, God commands Noah, "Make thee an ark of gopher wood." Modern scholars believe it means the extremely durable wood of the tall massive evergreen cypresses that, together with towering cedars and oaks, clothed the slopes of the Lebanon and other mountain ranges in Biblical times. Gopher is very similar to the Hebrew and Greek words for cypress.
In Genesis 25:10, God commands Moses to build a tabernacle, an ark of testimony and table, using shittim wood. Shittim is the plural of shittah, the Hebrew name (Isaiah 41:19) for an acacia that grows on Mt Sinai, the most common tree in the Arabian desert where the Israelites wandered for 40 years. The shittim is a legume, its branches are armed with spines, and the fruit is a pod. Here it is gnarled, twisted and shrubby, elsewhere it becomes 25 feet tall, its hard, orange-brown wood valuable for cabinet work.
Another legume, very common in the Holy Land, is the evergreen carob or locust-tree. Its seed pods, from 6 to 10 inches long, full of a sticky pulp and honey-like syrup when ripe, are used as food for livestock as well as people. Those were the husks eaten by the prodigal son (Luke 15:16) and possibly the locusts eaten by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:4). A third legume, native to Palestine is the famous Judas-tree, upon which, according to legends, Judas Iscariot hanged himself.
The Holy Land, 3000 years ago, was a land of palm trees, especially the date palm that not only produces bread, wine, and honey, but has, the Arabs say, as many uses as there are days in the year. Outside the walls of cities, wealthy people had gardens in which grew olive and fig trees, spices, and perhaps a few trees such as apricot, pomegranate, almond, pistachio, and Persian walnut. (Euxton.com)
Perhaps not surprisingly, trees appear at the foundations of many of the world's religions. Because of their relative rarity in the Near East, trees are regarded in the Bible as something almost sacred and are used to symbolize longevity, strength, and pride. Elements of pagan tree cults and worship have survived into Judeo-Christian theology. In Genesis, two trees -- the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil -- grow at the centre of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:9). Scriptural and apocryphal traditions regarding the Tree of Life later merge in Christianity with the cult of the cross [cf. Sacred Shapes and Symbols] to produce the Tree of the Cross. The fantastic Story of the True Cross identifies the wood used for the cross in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as being ultimately from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. Other stories claim that Adam was buried at Jerusalem and three trees grew out of his mouth to mark the centre of the earth.
In the Old Testament, trees are also associated with the ancient Canaanite religion devoted to the mother goddess Asherah which the Israelites, intent on establishing their monotheistic cult of Yahweh, saught to suppress and replace. The cult Asherah and her consort Baal was evidently celebrated in high places, on the tops of hills and mountains [cf. The Sacred Mountain], where altars dedicated to Baal and carved wooden poles or statues of Asherah (or the Asherahs; in the past Asherah has also been translated as grove, or wood, or tree) were evidently located. In Deuteronomy 12:2, the Israelites are directed "to destroy all the places, wherein the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every green tree; you shall tear down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their Asherim with fire."
With the encouragement of Pope Saint Gregory the Great in the 6th century CE, a common practice among proselytizing Christians was to graft Christian theology onto pre-existing pagan rites and sacred places. In the case of pagan tree cults, this may initially involve the destruction of the sacred grove or the cutting down of a sacred tree. However, it would appear that frequently a church would be built on the same site, thereby co-opting it in the service of Christian conversion. The process effectively Christianized the sacred powers or energies of the original site. Examples of this include the medieval Gothic cathedral of Chartres, which was built on a site which was once sacred to the Celtic Druids (acorns, oak twigs, and tree idols in the scultural decorations on the South Portal of the cathedral may allude to the original Druidic oak grove. And before the Druids, during the Neolithic period, the same site may have been a sacred burial mound.
-- Sacred Places: Trees and the Sacred, Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe