TIL although the idea that Adam and Eve ate an apple is common, the Book of Genesis never mentions the identity of the forbidden fruit.
It's also not the Tree of Knowledge, it's the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that presents a problem:
If Adam and Eve did not yet understand what is and is not a good thing to do, they could not possibly have understood that it was not good to disobey God. Eve did not know the serpent was evil. And yet he punishes Adam and Eve for doing what they did not realize was wrong of them to do.
Go a step before that. Why'd God put the tree there in the first place?
God created sin, introduced it to humanity, and ensured evil would spread across the earth.
It always complete the picture to understand that the creation myth used in the Bible was not Jewish or Christian in origin. It was an appropriation of a pagan myth of the era. Like most Christianity, it is just a syncretism to make the cult palatable to the newly recruited. "Oh yes, that thing that you already believe in was totally our god".
And yet he punishes Adam and Eve for doing what they did not realize was wrong of them to do.
You say this like punishing people who don't understand the rules isn't a fundamental part of christianity.
Adam and Eve was pre-Christianity though.
Side note, and God created the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. God created everything. Therefore, God created evil.
Further, God does evil.
After the flood, there is a line that says "and God repented of the evil he had done"
And to me, that just basically means that evil is circumstantial. Not that there is a pure drop of evil in the universe, but rather that a thing that is meant to be a good thing can be an evil thing based on its interpretation.
To whit: it wasn't evil that Adam and Eve were naked. God made them that way. And yet because they became aware of it and changed a innocent thing into an evil thing, that is what the evil was.
Which makes a lot more sense when you know these stories are adaptations of earlier myths. The polytheistic religions they came out of had no problem thinking the gods do evil things sometimes because they feel like it. As things transitioned to monotheism, and "God is good and merciful" was taken as a given, you end up having to jump through hoops to explain why this passage explicitly says God did evil. Even if the explanation is on some level convincing, it's going to be more convoluted than "these stories evolved from earlier polytheistic religions".
You should check out the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. He points out the importance of the name of the tree and has really interesting anthropological theories regarding the origin of the Adam and Eve story.
The Gnostic interpretation always made more sense to me. The serpent being a form of Christ.
He mostly punishes Eve. The first few pages are sexist as fuck
"Eat the fucking fruit!"
I think apple used to be a generic term for fruits.
It is especially apparent for exotic fruits, for example here is a list of fruits from the Caribbean, none of then are related to the European apple:
It can, but I'm not sure if that explains why it's often represented as an apple in the west.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
In Western Europe, the fruit was often depicted as an apple. This was possibly because of a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – two unrelated words mālum, a native Latin noun which means 'evil' (from the adjective malus), and mâlum, another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means 'apple'. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as "de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali": "but of the tree literally 'wood'] of knowledge of good and evil" (mali here is the genitive of malum). There is nothing in the Bible indicating that the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was an apple.[10]
Potato (Pomme de Terre, Erdapfel)
In a slavic language (either Croatian or Czech, I forgot), it's krompir, literally ground/soil pear.
My money's on it being a pomegranate originally. Apples wouldn't have existed in the fertile crescent over 2000 years ago. Pomegranates are also messy and look bloody when eating them, fitting the "carnal knowledge" side of the story. I've heard other people suggest they could have been dates, but pomegranates seem like a way better fit for the story.
I don't know why but I want to say persimmon. They're worth getting tossed out of paradise for atnleast
Imagine them getting an underripe one and just getting that nasty dry mouth feeling AND getting booted from paradise to top it off.
Adam and Eve never once complained about how freaking annoying it is to eat a pomegranate because 90% of it is dried bark and every tiny seed has its own inedible seed so I doubt that's what it was.
I read somewhere it should have been a fig.
There's evidence of apple cultivation in the middle east from around 5000 years ago as far as I know.
Except that basically all fruits were apples for a really long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple
Etymology
The word apple, whose Old English ancestor is æppel, is descended from the Proto-Germanic noun *aplaz, descended in turn from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl.[3]
As late as the 17th century, the word also functioned as a generic term for all fruit, including nuts. This can be compared to the 14th-century Middle English expression appel of paradis, meaning a banana.[4]
So yes... We have no idea what the fruit actually was. Because all fruit were basically called "apple".
Good thing there never was any apple because it's all fantasy improv. Just decide on a fruit and you are as right as everybody else.
Good thing there never was any apple because it’s all fantasy improv.
The validity of the story was never in question for me... I'm atheist. Doesn't mean we can't discuss the story for what it is. It's clear the writers of the story called it an apple because that's what all fruit would have been called. That's it. Don't need to shit on someone else's belief in the process.
Just like the majority of colors were more or less unnamed in a LOT of cultures until relatively recently.
Edit: Typo
I like the "magic mushroom" theory.
I won't say I believe it. But I like it.
Apple is probably the most common interpretation because a lot of languages use it as kind of a vague fruit term, and the Bible has been retranslated and reinterpreted roughly one million times. The French call potatoes apples
Including English: æppel meant any kind of fruit, which is why you have names like pineapple and elephant apple.
The french call potatoes earth apples. Pomme de terre.
It is also an older german term for them, though I believe austria still uses it: Erdapfel.
Same in Dutch: aardappel (aard=earth, appel=apple)
Not to be confused with the Pferdeapfel.
It was probably butt. Buttfruit. Eating ass was the forbidden fruit.
So the fruit was a dingleberry?
its like a banana except you have suck out the fruit from one end
It actually being a durian would have been too on the nose.
The good thing about fiction is if there is a gap, you can fill it with your own headcanon
Well I'd guess fig since the covered their naughty bits with fig leaves after
I've heard that before apples, pomegranates were the assumed go-to.
It's been depicted as various things in old art and literature. Apple is very common. But you also find figs, grapes, pomegranates, and occasionally pears. Probably some others I missed.
Isn't it a birds and the bees story translated through a religious conservative lense... The forbidden fruit is sex.
It's knowledge of good and evil and it says that quite literally in Genesis, but fundies say all kinds of dumb stuff.
Fishy story! 8*0
Imo it's much more likely to have never been an actual piece of fruit. The story is probably an allegoric warning for some taboo subject and now we can only speculate on what was originally meant.
My theory: Adam and Eve were convinced by Adam's one eyed snake to fornicate, but then their dad found out and kicked them out.
It’s common knowledge Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. I’m not sure why because it doesn’t say that anywhere in the Bible.
Well, I do. It was the easiest way to suppress women’s power in the church and in general.
I think there was a non-canonical gospel that said so. And yes, the early church seemed to be relatively liberal with women's rights. A lot of that got clawed back with later additions and choices of what books to include in the biblical canon.
The gospel of Mary Magdalene for instance.
nice try, Tim Cook.
They were Palestinian, right? It was probably a Clementine.
Watermelon
Only a few know the truth, it was a tomato. I know because the way that it is.
That's why people throw tomatoes when they want someone to get off the stage.
I've misread "book of genesis" as "book of gender".