Forbidden fruit
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In Abrahamic religions, forbidden fruit is a name given to the fruit growing in the Garden of Eden that God commands mankind not to eat. In the biblical story, Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are exiled from Eden:
As a metaphor outside of the Abrahamic religions, the phrase typically refers to any indulgence or pleasure that is considered illegal or immoral.
Biblical storyEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The story of the Book of Genesis places the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, where they may eat the fruit of many trees, but are forbidden by God to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In Genesis 3, a serpent tempts the woman: Template:Quote
Desiring this knowledge, the woman eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to the man, who also eats it. They become aware of their nakedness and make fig-leaf clothes, and hide themselves when God approaches. When confronted, Adam tells God that Eve gave him the fruit to eat, and Eve tells God that the serpent deceived her into eating it. God then curses the serpent, the woman, and the man, and expels the man and woman from the Garden before they eat of the tree of eternal life.
Quranic storyEdit
Template:Further According to the Quran, Surah Al-A'raf 7:19 describes Adam and his wife in Paradise where they may eat what is provided, except for one Tree they must not eat from, lest they be considered Template:Transliteration (Template:Langx; 'wrongdoers').<ref>Template:Qref ˹Allah said,˺ "O Adam! Live with your wife in Paradise and eat from wherever you please, but do not approach this tree, or else you will be wrongdoers."</ref>
Surah Al-A'raf 7:20–22 describes [[Satan#Islam|Template:Transliteration]] (Template:Langx), who whispers to Adam and his wife and deceives them. When they tasted of the tree, their nakedness was exposed to them, prompting them to cover themselves with leaves from Paradise.<ref>Template:Qref</ref>
Gnostic storyEdit
A Gnostic interpretation of the story proposes that it was the archons who created Adam and attempted to prevent him from eating the forbidden fruit in order to keep him in a state of ignorance, after the spiritual form of Eve entered the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil while leaving a physical version of herself with Adam once she awakened him. However, the forces of the heavenly realm (Pleroma) sent the serpent as a representative of the divine sphere to reveal to Adam and Eve the evil intentions of their creators. The serpent succeeded in convincing them to eat the fruit and become like gods, capable of distinguishing between good and evil.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Identifications and depictionsEdit
The word fruit appears in Hebrew as Template:Langx. As to which fruit may have been the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, possibilities include an apple, grapes, a pomegranate,<ref name="straightdope.com"/> a fig,<ref>The Fig: its History, Culture, and Curing, Gustavus A. Eisen, Washington, Govt. print. off., 1901</ref> carob,<ref name="straightdope.com"/> etrog or citron,<ref name="straightdope.com"/> pear, quince, wheat, banana, coco de mer, and mushrooms. The pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch describes the tree of knowledge: "It was like a species of the Tamarind tree, bearing fruit which resembled grapes extremely fine; and its fragrance extended to a considerable distance. I exclaimed, How beautiful is this tree, and how delightful is its appearance!" (1 Enoch 31:4).
In Islamic tradition, the fruit is commonly either identified with wheat or with grapevine.<ref>Mahmoud Ayoub The Qur'an and Its Interpreters, Volume 1 SUNY Press, 1984, Template:ISBN, p. 82.</ref>
AppleEdit
Template:See also In Western Europe, the fruit is often depicted as an apple. This is frequently explained as resulting from a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – two unrelated words {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a native Latin noun which means 'evil' (from the adjective {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}), and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which means 'apple'. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}: "but of the tree [literally 'wood'] of knowledge of good and evil" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}} here is the genitive of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}). However, Yadin-Israel argues that Latin Christian writers from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages rarely used {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} to refer to the forbidden fruit.Template:Sfn
Azzan Yadin-Israel argues that the identification of the forbidden fruit with an apple first appears in medieval French art of the 12th century. According to Yadin-Israel, Latin authors frequently referred to the forbidden fruit as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a Latin word meaning "fruit". From this term derived the Old French word pom (modern French pomme), which originally also meant "fruit", but in later times the word took on the narrower meaning of "apple", leading medieval artists to represent the fruit as an apple.Template:Sfn
An additional influence may have been the golden apple motif in Classical myth - such as the Apple of Discord, described in the Iliad.
Nothing in the Bible indicates that the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was an apple.Template:Sfn
The larynx, specifically the laryngeal prominence that joins the thyroid cartilage, in the human throat is noticeably more prominent in males and was consequently called an Adam's apple, from a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in Adam's throat as he swallowed it.<ref>E. Cobham Brewer (1810–1897). Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898. "Adam's Apple"</ref>
GrapeEdit
Rabbi Meir says that the fruit was a grape, made into wine.<ref name="Berachot 40a; Sanhedrin 70a">Berachot 40a; Sanhedrin 70a.</ref> The Zohar explains similarly that Noah attempted (but failed) to rectify the sin of Adam by using grape wine for holy purposes.<ref>Zohar Noah 73a</ref><ref>The Zohar: The First Ever Unabridged English Translation, with Commentary; Rabbi Michael Berg, ed., Vol. 2, pp.388-390</ref> The midrash of Bereishit Rabah states that the fruit was grape,<ref>Bereishit Rabah 15:7</ref> or squeezed grapes (perhaps alluding to wine).<ref>Bereishit Rabah 19:5</ref> Chapter 4 of 3 Baruch, also known as the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, designates the fruit as the grape. 3 Baruch is a first to third century text that is either Christian or Jewish with Christian interpolations.<ref>3 Baruch, Chapter 4, available at: http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~kazhdan/Shneider/apocr2010/3%20Baruch%20OTP.pdf</ref>
FigEdit
Template:See also The Bible states in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve had made their own fig leaf clothing: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles".<ref>Template:Bibleverse</ref> Rabbi Nehemiah Hayyun supports the idea that the fruit was a fig, as it was from fig leaves that Adam and Eve made garments for themselves after eating the fruit. "By that with which they were made low were they rectified."<ref name="Berachos 40a; Sanhedrin 70a">Berachos 40a; Sanhedrin 70a</ref> Since the fig is a long-standing symbol of female sexuality, it enjoyed a run as a favorite understudy to the apple as the forbidden fruit during the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo Buonarroti depicting it as such in his fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
PomegranateEdit
Proponents of the theory that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in what is now known as the Middle East suggest that the fruit was actually a pomegranate, as it is one of the earliest domesticated plants on the Eastern Mediterranean.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The association of the pomegranate with knowledge of the underworld as provided in the Ancient Greek legend of Persephone may also have given rise to an association with knowledge of the otherworld, tying-in with knowledge that is forbidden to mortals. It is also believed Hades offered Persephone a pomegranate to force her to stay with him in the underworld. Hades is the Greek god of the underworld and the Bible states that whoever eats the forbidden fruit shall die.
WheatEdit
Rabbi Yehuda proposes that the fruit was wheat, because "a baby does not know to call its mother and father until it tastes the taste of grain."<ref name="Berachot 40a; Sanhedrin 70a"/>
In Hebrew, wheat is Template:Transliteration, which has been considered to be a pun on Template:Transliteration, meaning "sin".<ref name="straightdope.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Although commonly confused with a seed, in the study of botany a wheat berry is technically a simple fruit known as a caryopsis, which has the same structure as an apple. Just as an apple is a fleshy fruit that contains seeds, a grain is a dry fruit that absorbs water and contains a seed. The confusion comes from the fact that the fruit of a grass happens to have a form similar to some seeds.<ref name="Mauseth2014">Template:Cite book</ref>
MushroomEdit
A fresco in the 13th-century Plaincourault Abbey in France depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, flanking a Tree of Knowledge that has the appearance of a gigantic Amanita muscaria, a psychoactive mushroom.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Terence McKenna proposed that the forbidden fruit was a reference to psychotropic plants and fungi, specifically psilocybin mushrooms, which he theorized played a central role in the evolution of the human brain.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> Earlier, in a well-documented but heavily criticized study,<ref>"John Allegro, 65; Aided Deciphering of Dead Sea Scrolls", obit., NY Times</ref><ref>John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Judith Anne Brown, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (1 March 2005), Template:ISBN, pp. xii-xiii</ref> John M. Allegro proposed the mushroom as the forbidden fruit.<ref>Template:Cite book, re-released in a new edition by Gnostic Media Research & Publishing in 2009</ref>
BananaEdit
Several proponents of the theory that the forbidden fruit was a banana exist dating from the 13th century.
In Nathan HaMe'ati's 13th-century translation of Maimonides's work The Medical Aphorisms of Moses, the banana is called the "apple of Eden".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In the 16th century, Menahem Lonzano considered it common knowledge in Syria and Egypt that the banana was the apple of Eden.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Coco de merEdit
Charles George Gordon identified the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge with the coco de mer.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Parallel conceptsEdit
Alcohol in the Bible explores the dual role of alcohol, highlighting its positive uses and warnings against excess. In biblical narratives, the fermentation of fruit into wine holds significance, with grapes and wine often linked to both celebration and cautionary tales of sin and temptation, reminiscent of the concept of the forbidden fruit.
Greek mythologyEdit
The similarities of the story to the story of Pandora's box were identified by early Christians such as Tertullian, Origen, and Gregory of Nazianzus.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
See alsoEdit
- Grapefruit, originally named the "forbidden fruit" of Barbados.<ref name="Forbidden_Fruit">Template:Cite book</ref>
- Medieval popular Bible
- Ningishzida
- Pomme d'Adammo
- Serpent seed
ReferencesEdit
BibliographyEdit
External linksEdit
- Template:Bibleverse – English–Hebrew comparison at mechon-mamre.org