The word
fruit appears in Hebrew as . As to which fruit may have been the forbidden fruit of the
Garden of Eden, possibilities include an
apple,
grapes, a
pomegranate,
carob,
Apple 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 , a native
Latin noun which means 'evil' (from the adjective ), and , another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek , which means 'apple'. In the
Vulgate,
Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as : "but of the tree [literally 'wood'] of knowledge of good and evil" ( here is the
genitive of ). However, Yadin-Israel argues that
Latin Christian writers from
Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages rarely used to refer to the forbidden fruit.
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 , 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. 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. 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.
Grape Rabbi Meir says that the fruit was a grape, made into wine. The
Zohar explains similarly that
Noah attempted (but failed) to rectify the sin of Adam by using grape wine for holy purposes. The
midrash of
Bereishit Rabah states that the fruit was grape, or squeezed grapes (perhaps alluding to wine). 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.
Fig 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". 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." 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.
Pomegranate 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. 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.
Wheat 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." 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.
Mushroom 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.
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. Earlier, in a well-documented but heavily criticized study,
John M. Allegro proposed the mushroom as the forbidden fruit.
Banana 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". In the 16th century,
Menahem Lonzano considered it common knowledge in
Syria and
Egypt that the banana was the apple of Eden.
Coco de mer Charles George Gordon identified the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge with the
coco de mer. ==Parallel concepts==