Origins of the Forbidden Fruit Myth
Gone Medieval
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The Origins of the Fruit of Man
The prevailing wisdom put the emergence of the idea that the fruit was an apple down to a Latin kind of play on words. The word for apple and the word for evil are homonyms, malum. In both cases the word is malum so the scholarly interpretation is that since the forbidden fruit brought about this terrible evil what better fruit to explain the biblical malum than the malum the apple? It has no basis there are no latin commentators I mean I spent a year reading through all the latin commentaries I could find on the book of Genesis and you just don't find it. Even into the 14th century commentators who do discuss the species of fruit that tempted Adam and Eve
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