The Tree of Knowledge
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil....
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
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.
-- Genesis 2: 9, 16-17 (KJV)
Having described Yahweh's creation of Adam, the author of Genesis 2 moves on to Adam's home, Eden (after the Sumerian word for "plain"), located roughly in what is now southeastern Iraq. God equips this primeval paradise with rivers, precious minerals, and above all lots of pretty fruit trees.
For reasons best known to himself, God singles out one particular tree -- called the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" -- whose fruit man is forbidden to eat. This, of course, is the famous "forbidden fruit," though you may be surprised to know that that phrase appears nowhere in the Bible. (It was coined in the seventeenth century; "forbidden apple" is even older). And despite all those pictures of a serpent tempting Eve with an apple, the Bible never tells us what kind of fruit the tree of knowledge bears. If anything, it was more likely apricots, pomegranates, or figs than apples. (Adam and Eve will use fig leaves to hide their nakedness at Genesis 3: 7; thus the expression "to cover with a fig leaf.")
But the important point about this tree is that if Adam (meaning "man") eats of it, he shall on that day be "doomed to death" as the Hebrew says. (The King James rendering -- "thou shalt surely die" -- jumps the gun; Adam and Eve live to tell the tale.) God wouldn't have had to say this, of course, if he didn't know Adam would be sorely tempted, which raises the question of why he put the tree in the garden in the first place.
Also puzzling is what the author means by "knowledge of good and evil." In the Hebrew original, the word for "knowledge" also means "knowing," and the entire phrase might be translated as "knowing how to distinguish good from bad" -- which Adam presumably wouldn't need to do so long as nothing bad turned up in paradise. But God never promised him that.
As we all know, a serpent does get Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and she quickly persuades Adam to join her (Genesis 3: 6). Thus "doomed to die," they are expelled from Eden so that they can't get their hands on another magical tree, the "tree of life," mentioned in Genesis 2 as a source of immortality. This one was probably a pomegranate tree, since that fruit was a symbol of eternal life in the Near East.
If you happen to crave the "forbidden fruit" of your forebears, you can still find it today if you live near a good market. The term has been bestowed on a few species of citrus, such as the grapefruitlike shaddock, one variety of which is known as Citrus paradisi. Another term for this fruit is "Adam's apple," a name also given to that projection of cartilege in men's throats, on the fanciful assumption that a piece of forbidden fruit stuck in Adam's.
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books
on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling
Brush Up Your Shakespeare!
