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How Did The Apple Become The Biblical 'Forbidden Fruit'?

Getting back to apples - can't forget Eris' golden apple of discord "KALLISITI" which translates as "For the prettiest" - Eris tossed this into a meeting of the gods to stir up a bit of discord between the godesses.
 
This new Live Science article explains how there's no reason to associate the apple with the 'forbidden fruit' in Genesis and notes multiple other botanical items that scholars have suggested are more likely to have been the 'fruit' to which authors referred.
Was the 'forbidden fruit' in the Garden of Eden really an apple?

What's the likely identity of the "forbidden fruit" described in the Bible's Garden of Eden, which Eve is said to have eaten and then shared with Adam?

If your guess is "apple," you're probably wrong.

The Hebrew Bible doesn't actually specify what type of fruit Adam and Eve ate. "We don't know what it was. There's no indication it was an apple," Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky, a professor of brain science at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, told Live Science. ...

As for the type of fruit, it's described as "just the 'fruit of the tree,'" Zivotofsky said. "That's all it says. No identification. We don't know what kind of tree, we don't know what fruit."

The Hebrew word used in that verse is "peri," a generic word for fruit in both biblical and modern Hebrew, according to Zivotofsky. The modern Hebrew word for apple, "tapuach," on the other hand, does not appear anywhere in Genesis or in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, Zivotofsky said. (It does appear in other, later biblical texts.) In biblical times, "tapuach," was a word for generic fruit.

So, if the forbidden fruit wasn't an apple, what was it? ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/what-was-forbidden-fruit-in-eden.html
 
EnolaGaia said:
This new Live Science article explains how there's no reason to associate the apple with the 'forbidden fruit' in Genesis and notes multiple other botanical items that scholars have suggested are more likely to have been the 'fruit' to which authors referred.


FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/what-was-forbidden-fruit-in-eden.html
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Many people think the fruit from the tree of knowledge was actually a quince.

"Many references to fruit in ancient texts, such as the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, were probably referring to the quince. Greek mythology associates the quince with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and many believe that the golden apple given to her by Paris was a quince."
 
GNC said:
I'd read it was probably a fig, but I don't have a source to hand.
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Actually yes, you have triggered a memory...I heard that too...I think on a Radio4 programme about the historical significance of the fig tree.
 
Coastaljames said:
Actually yes, you have triggered a memory...I heard that too...I think on a Radio4 programme about the historical significance of the fig tree.
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Adam and Eve used the leaves of a fig tree to cover their nudity, after partaking of the forbidden fruit, and gaining the knowledge that they were naked.
 
I had heard there was a believe that the forbidden fruit was a tomato:
https://delishably.com/fruits/All-About-Fruits-and-Vegetables-Tomato
From where did the idea originate that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple? Let's review the story.

We are told in Genesis that Adam and Eve are living the perfect life in Eden. They may eat fruit from any tree except one, "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Guess what? They eat the forbidden fruit and are expelled from paradise.

The original Hebrew says only "fruit," but in latter-day Western art, ranging from serious religious paintings to about a million cartoons, the item in question is invariably depicted as an apple. I don't think so. My vote is that it was a tomato.

Think about it. On a summer day is there anything more fragrant, sweet, or (dare I say) Heavenly than a plump ripe tomato, warmed by the sun? If you have grown your own tomatoes, or are fortunate enough to be the BFF of someone else who does, I'm sure you'll agree with me.
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MrRING said:
I had heard there was a believe that the forbidden fruit was a tomato ...
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Tomatoes originated in the Americas (specifically South America) and weren't known anywhere in the Old World until European explorers brought back samples, presumably starting in the 16th century.

However ... Tomatoes were initially reputed to be poisonous back in the Old World, and this was probably the basis for metaphorical connections drawn between them and the forbidden fruit of Genesis.
 
EnolaGaia said:
However ... Tomatoes were initially reputed to be poisonous back in the Old World, and this was probably the basis for metaphorical connections drawn between them and the forbidden fruit of Genesis.
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Aren't they related to deadly nightshade?
 
Both tomatoes and 'deadly nightshade' are members of the taxonomic family Solanaceae. This entire family is sometimes called "nightshades."
 
Ok.

How about Medlars?

Hard, tart fruit.

But when you let them go overripe and rotten, they are soft and sweet.

The process is called `Bletting` and is applied to many old fashioned fruit, such as service berries.

So, a spiritual lesson there; to enjoy the medlar, you have to wait until its rotten.
 
Kondoru said:
Ok.

How about Medlars?

Hard, tart fruit.

But when you let them go overripe and rotten, they are soft and sweet.

The process is called `Bletting` and is applied to many old fashioned fruit, such as service berries.

So, a spiritual lesson there; to enjoy the medlar, you have to wait until its rotten.
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Not a very appealing fruit.
 
The medlar is known to have been indigenous in the eastern Mediterranean / southwestern Asia regions, so it's a potential candidate.
 
Honestly, once I discovered that the apple was never mentioned as the fruit in the Bible, I just assumed that the tree of knowledge and its fruit were purely metaphorical concepts, and that no actual fruit had ever been intended. In the west, other folklore and mythology has given us images of apples, including the garden of the hesperides, containing a tree of golden apples guarded by a serpent. With the need for artistic representation of the much illustrated event of Eve, Adam, tree and serpent in the garden, I assumed a little of other mythologies leaked into our biblical image at some point in the medieval period. What is our first extant representation of the apple being the forbidden fruit?
 
PeteByrdie said:
I just assumed that the tree of knowledge and its fruit were purely metaphorical concepts...
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Even as a Christian, maybe because I'm a Christian - the concept of what in the Bible is metaphorical and what it literal is an endless journey.

The cloud of unknowing.
 
PeteByrdie said:
... What is our first extant representation of the apple being the forbidden fruit?
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It's not clear when artistic renderings of Adam and Eve first illustrated the forbidden fruit as an apple (a specific fruit; in the modern sense of the word). However, the pivotal shift toward consistently portraying the fruit as an apple is most commonly attributed to Dürer.

Dürer's 1504 Adam and Eve engraving is sometimes cited as the most influential treatment of the subject during that era.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336222

However, the arguably apple-like fruit Eve is offering Adam is a fig based on Dürer's detailed rendering of the leaves.

Dürer's 1507 painting, on the other hand, is clearly depicting the proffered fruit as an apple (check the leaves).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albrecht_Dürer_-_Adam_and_Eve_(Prado).jpg

From that point onward European artists regularly followed Dürer's lead in portraying the fruit as an apple - e.g., Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1533:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_...aradies_(Sündenfall)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
 
Well, since the fruits of the tree in question give the consumer knowledge of (presumably Judeo-Christian understandings of) good and evil, and seems to be the origin of human ego (without which we couldn't have shame), and we know of no tree that produces such fruit, I'm happy to accept it as mythical. Perhaps it's from the same family as the lotus from The Odyssey.
 
How about the `Bullrushes` and `Reedmace` problem?

All down to an artist who didnt know his aquatic plants.
 
The apple seems to have a special place in human history and folklore!

apple.png
 
I think *everyone runs away* Wait! Come back!

Anyway...I think it might've been a case of the Bible's authors wanting to disassociate their faith from paganism (for instance: apples were often represented as being symbolic and significant, usually in a positive way, in many ancient myths). This 'disassociaton' habit perhaps also extends to prohibitions that might seem strange to us moderns e.g. forbidding the eating of certain meats; maybe Jewish and Christian authorities wanted to highlight the supposedly vast differences between their followers and those of other religions.

More specifically it may be notable that, in those myths, apples were frequently associated with bestowing literally wonder-ful benefits - miracles like eternal life, and so on - that certain parties wanted to be thought of as exclusively within the gift of their God.
 
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AFAIK many nouns that were untranslatable from the original Hebrew into Koinos Greek and thence to English were given synonyms that were understandable and did not detract from the original meaning to the reader.

Hence 'fruit of a tree' = apple, and 'made clothes from leaves' = fig leaves in the earlier English translations and in pictorial representations.

Some interesting info here regarding the naming of uncertain species in the Hebrew Torah eg.,

"...The hyrax, for chewing the cud without having cloven hooves. (The Hebrew term for this animal—שפן shapan —has been translated by older English versions of the bible as coney; the hyrax was not known to early English translators. The coney was an exclusively European animal, not present in Canaan, while the shapan was described by the Book of Proverbs as living on rocks like the hyrax, but unlike the coney.)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_animals
 
Anonymous said:
Apparently, the apple is seen as the 'forbidden fruit' because of a pun on the Latin malum meaning 'evil'. Mary is sometimes depicted carrying an apple because she is the new Eve theough whom mankind is redeemed from Original Sin. The Christ-Child is also sometimes depicted with an apple to symbolise redemption. Three apples are the attribute of St. Dorothea, who was persecuted for refusing to marry a pagan. She was condemned to death, and the Governor's secretary, Theophilius, mocked her, asking her for fruit from heaven. At the moment of her death, an angel appeared to Theophilius and presented him with three roses and three apples, although it was midwinter. He became a convert and was himself martyred. The apple is sometimes represented in art as a pear or quince.
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As already stated in 2003, there's nothing extraordinary or weird about the apple being used to depict the "forbidden fruit". The Latin word for "apple" is "malus", which is a synonym of "evil" ...

Therefore "apple" is a fitting reminder of both the fruit of the knowledge of (good and) evil, and of the result of consuming this fruit : the "fall", e.g evil.

Although it has traditionally been interpreted as a tale about the consequence of "hybris" on the part of man, the myth sounds to me as a condemnation of dualism.

But that makes an heretic of myself ...
 
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