“How do You know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus replied, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” (John 1:48)
This is all we get here. The popular interpretation is that Jesus saw Him underneath the fig tree shortly before this exchange, as the Holy Fathers echo. But there is a much later legend coming out of the medieval East Assyrian tradition of Nathanael and the Fig Tree. This comes from the Nestorian Solomon of Akhlat in the 13th century in a book innocently called “the Book of the Bee.” The legend says that the fig tree was important in the life of Nathanael because he was amongst the infants persecuted by Herod. Nathanael’s father then put him underneath a fig tree and he was saved.
“The number of the children whom he killed was two thousand, but some say one thousand eight hundred…The father of the child Nathanael also took him, and wrapped him round, and laid him under a fig-tree; and he was saved from slaughter. Hence our Lord said to Nathanael, 'Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree’” (The Book of the Bee, Chapter 39)
A similar account was attributed to the tenth-century Syriac lexicographer Bar Bahlul, whose Lexicon reportedly states that Nathanael’s mother, not father, placed him beneath a fig tree during Herod’s slaughter of the infants. Because Bar Bahlul’s Lexicon accumulated later interpolations during its transmission, however, it is difficult to establish securely whether this particular tradition actually goes back to the tenth-century form of the work.
I find this schismatic tradition fascinating, the Holy Fathers are in agreement that this story happened recently before the encounter with Jesus:
“I have known you from the first … and but now I saw you by the fig-tree; when there was no one present there but only Philip and Nathanael who said all these things in private.” (Homily 20 on the Gospel of John, Chrysostom)
Chrysostom understands the fig-tree verse as a recent event of Philip’s conversation with Nathanael, not something from Nathanael’s infancy. Interesting how an alternative story can pop up 9 to 12 centuries later that is complete opposition to the established tradition of the Church. Then, a cult following forms swearing by this later tradition. Lord have mercy on us.