Bananas Are Not in the Bible — and That Is Worth Knowing

Bananas are not in the Bible. Not once, in any translation working honestly from the original languages — and not because the writers had better things to mention.

The banana is a plant of tropical Asia. It had not reached the eastern Mediterranean when Scripture was written, and the people who wrote it had never seen one.

Are bananas mentioned in the Bible?

No. The fruit of Scripture belongs to a specific and rather small landscape: the fig, the olive, the grape, the pomegranate, the date, the almond, the sycamore fig. Those are the trees of Canaan and its neighbours, and they are the ones the writers reached for because they were in the field, at the gate, in the courtyard.

Where the banana appears, it does so through a translator’s choice rather than the text. Some older or paraphrase editions render an unfamiliar plant with a familiar one for readers in another climate, which is a reasonable thing to do and not evidence of anything. The Hebrew and Greek do not say banana.

What about the “plantain” in some Bibles?

This one is worth clearing up, because it sends people in circles.

English “plantain” covers two entirely unrelated plants: the cooking banana, and a low broadleaf weed that grows in European lawns and was used in old herbal medicine. Where an older English Bible or commentary mentions a plantain, it means the second. The similarity of the words is an accident of English.

Why this matters more than it seems

We might ask why a page about a missing fruit deserves any attention. Here is why, dear friends.

The Bible is a book about actual places. Bethlehem is a real town with a real altitude and a dry season. The mustard seed Jesus mentioned was in a real field within sight of the people listening. When he said the fig tree was putting out its leaves, they knew exactly which month he meant.

Every time we ask whether some modern thing is “in the Bible,” we are brushing against that fact — and the fact is a good one. God did not deliver his word into a nowhere made of general principles. He put it into one small country with a particular list of trees, and let it be understood by people who worked those trees.

The Word became flesh, John says, and flesh is always local. It has a climate and an accent and a diet.

The fruit that is in the Bible

And since we are here, the tree Scripture actually keeps returning to is the fig, and it is worth knowing why.

A fig takes years to bear. It cannot be hurried, and a family that plants one is making a promise to a future they may not see. That is why sitting under one’s own vine and fig tree is the Bible’s shorthand for peace — it means nobody has burned the orchard in a generation.

And Paul, listing what the Spirit grows in a person, calls it fruit rather than achievement. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Not manufactured. Grown, slowly, in a particular soil, in a particular life.

A closing thought

So: no bananas. It is a small fact, and it can be held cheerfully.

God did not need to mention every good thing he made in order to have made it. The banana was already his, growing on the far side of the world, unrecorded and entirely loved — as most good things are, including most of us.

Related reading

• The Bible Never Mentions Avocados — but It Has an Advocate
• No One in the Bible Dreams About Eggs — but Jesus Talks About One
• Prayers for Gratitude