Sunday, October 6, 2013

Forbidden Fruit


To say I quite adore food is an understatement. The idea of the Garden of Eden with fruit and vegetables everywhere is heavenly, and fantasizing about the gardens has gotten me through more than one Sunday School lesson. The species of the forbidden fruit is a somewhat contentious topic, and I find it pretty intriguing. If it is interpreted as a literal piece of fruit, there's a wide range of possibilities.

The apple is the first thing that comes to mind for me. According to the great Wikipedia this is where the anatomical term "Adam's Apple" comes from, and it's most commonly used food in artistic representations. However, according to this article, and pretty much every other piece of research and speculation, there are quite a few different traditions. 

One that stuck out to me is the Judaic tradition of wheat. According to the aforementioned mentioned article, "...wheat was originally meant to grow on a tree, not as a grain, but as bread already baked. After the sin, this tree which would grow ready-made baked goods was reduced to a lowly plant which had to be harvested and processed to produce flour." 
 

Other theories include pomegranates, figs, grapes, and according to this  13th century French fresco a giant mushroom. I find it rather interesting that there are so many theories about a single little piece of food, and I'm still trying to figure out how to combine them into a pie.

3 comments:

  1. If you're interested in the different variations of the Fall story, you might be interested in African religions and their take on it. Often Christ appears as the serpent, not Satan, and it makes Moses having a serpent staff more understandable.

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  2. Ha! I love this. Yeah, the origin of "Adam's Apple" comes from a piece of the fruit getting stuck in Adam's throat. I love apples, but I always assumed that the fruit had to be peaches. I mean, it has to be. Peaches are amazing. A lot of people are arguing about what kind of fruit it was, but I wonder if this fruit even exists anymore?

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  3. This post reminded me of Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life and its fruit, and now it's got me wondering what type of fruit it would've been? I know it's different since it was a dream and everything was symbolic, but one can still speculate. I always find it interesting that many people associate the fruit from the forbidden tree to be an apple. Why that is, I'm not certain, but it's intriguing.

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