Plant Species Mentioned in Abrahamic Scriptures: Implications for Biodiversity and Traditional Agriculture and Horticulture

Abstract

Sacred texts such as the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Qur’an contain numerous references to plant species that reflect the plant resources, agricultural practices, and socio-cultural systems of ancient societies. These references also encode social meanings of plants, including their roles in ritual practices, cultural identity, collective memory, and the intergenerational transmission of traditional ecological knowledge.  The aim of this study was to identify plant species mentioned in these scriptures and to evaluate their relevance in the context of biodiversity and traditional agriculture and horticulture. A comparative textual analysis was conducted using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) for the Old and New Testaments and the English translation of the Qur’an by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem. The analysis documented plant taxa cited across the three scriptures and assessed their historical roles in food production, cultivation, ritual use, symbolic representation, and socio-cultural functions, and quantified similarities in plant species composition using pairwise Sørensen–Dice similarity indices. The findings are summarized in Tables 1–14. The analysis identified several frequently mentioned species, including olive (Olea europaea), grapevine (Vitis vinifera), fig (Ficus carica), date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), as well as cereal crops and various woody species. The recorded taxa were systematically organized according to their occurrence in the texts and their known agricultural or horticultural importance. The results indicate that several fruit crops, particularly olive and grapevine, appear consistently across the three scriptures, reflecting their long-standing importance in Mediterranean agricultural systems. Other species show text-specific prominence, such as the frequent mention of date palm in the Qur’an, corresponding to the ecological conditions and agricultural practices of arid and semi-arid regions. Beyond their nutritional and economic value, many of these plants also serve important social and cultural functions, including ritual use, expression of identity, symbolic representation of fertility and prosperity, and reinforcement of collective memory within religious traditions. These findings highlight the relationship between plant diversity, environmental conditions, and traditional cultivation practices in historical agroecosystems. The study demonstrates that historical literary sources can provide complementary information on plant diversity and long-term patterns of plant use. Such insights may contribute to contemporary discussions on biodiversity conservation, traditional plant resources, and the cultural heritage of agricultural landscapes.