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.
True. He even admits it in Isaiah:
Isaiah 45:7 - I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
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".
I think all major religious myths, like languages themselves, are derivative of previous myths on some level. Sure, there was a proto-mythology at some point, but it expanded, changed, etc. until it divided into multiple religions. And, of course, Judaism beget Christianity beget Islam, but all of them took other religious myths that were popular at the time and wove them into the tapestry.
I think they mean more like in say Europe where Christianity came in, took cultural events etc for other religions and claimed it as their own rather to make conversion easier.
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".
Consider that it is the knowledge itself that cast us down.
It doesn't matter. They were being punished for something they didn't know not to do.
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.
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]
My German professor even mentioned the archaic apfelsine for the citrus orange.
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.
I read somewhere it should have been a fig.
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.
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".
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.
its like a banana except you have suck out the fruit from one end
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.
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