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.
Calamity or disaster is a better translation. Looking at God as a judge, it’s His right to render a verdict and enact punishment.
Pretty good article on this verse and what it’s actually saying. https://www.str.org/w/does-isaiah-45-7-teach-that-god-created-evil-
Can’t have light without dark. Can’t have good without evil. Otherwise you just have boring stagnation. God likes chaos and excitement, not boring safety.
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.
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.
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”.
It doesn’t matter. They were being punished for something they didn’t know not to do.
Adam was told not to, but only afterwards did he know. These early part of Genesis are interesting in the way the world supposedly unfurled.
Also God kinda lied to them or at least deceived them by saying they’ll die if they eat the fruit from memory.
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
Sounds like a lie to me but I don’t know the original Hebrew so maybe it depends on your translation. To be fair it would be on the mild side of morally objectionable stuff God does in the bible.
“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:
- golden apple
- wax apple/rose apple
- pineapple
- sugar apple
- custard 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.
Apfelsine is not archaic. Very widely used today, at least here in the south.
Also, it literally means “Chinese apple” lol
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
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.
You can still approach the story on its own terms. If we said Captain Sisko drank tea rather than Raktajino, it’d still be wrong, even though Sisko and Raktajino don’t actually exist.
There is a original writer on startrek. They could recon Sisco to a tea lover tomorrow. The Bible is more like meme history, there is no regulating mechanism other than popularity. If you made the apple a banana tomorrow and most people agreed, it would be a banana and you would be right.
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
Of course, and I did not shit on any beliefs. I only commented on the phrasing that you chose, namely “what the fruit was”. Even if you were talking about a short story fan fiction this would be the same situation.
The story had dozens of authors and rewrites. There is no correct answer. Possibly some authors and editors would give you different answers. My take is that there is no correct answer to be found and we can’t rely on checking facts of the event.
I like the “magic mushroom” theory.
I won’t say I believe it. But I like it.
