WAS IT AN APPLE? That interesting question came up this week in my online study of biblical Hebrew.
| In Genesis 2, the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil",וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע. For many years, this fruit was portrayed and thought to be an apple. But in reality, the Bible does not say anything about an apple. So what did they eat in the Garden of Eden? What is the forbidden fruit? The description of the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil" leaves no trace as to the exact species of the tree. For many years, this fruit was thought to be an apple. In the original Hebrew, however, at no point is the apple (tapuach, תפוח) mentioned. The myth of the evil apple developed due to a mistake made by St. Jerome when he created the Latin version of the Bible, known as Vulgate in the year 382. So what fruit was it then? Jewish sources offer several answers -- nut (אגוז, egoz); citron (etrog, אתרוג); vine (gefen, גפן); wheat (חיטה, chitah); and fig (tenah, תאנה). The two most widespread interpretations are those of the vine and the fig, the prevailing one is of the fig as it is the first tree that appears in Genesis. Moreover, the text recounts that when the first couple realized that they were naked, they sewed a loincloth (to cover private parts) using a leaf of the fig tree. It would then be not be not too far-fetched to favor the fig as the forbidden fruit, since it was so handy. Anyway, this all reminds me of the question asked in jest: "If Eve wore a fig leaf, what did Adam wear? Sorry, that's a (w)hole other story! |
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