THE LEGENDARY APPLE

Evening Star, Issue 22524, 17 December 1936, Page 7

THE LEGENDARY APPLE

DID EVE PLUCK POMEGRANATE ? Almost every painter who has made a picture of Eve handing the forbidden fruit to Adam has shown it as an apple, writes Dr Clifton Levy, the Biblical scholar, in the ‘ San Francisco Chronicle.’ AVlienever the layman speaks of the forbidden fruit he speaks or thinks of an .apple. Yet, there is nothing in the Bible which indicates what fruit it was. All that Scripture states is that there was a certain tree in the midst of the Garden of Eden, the fruit of which was forbidden to Adam and Eve. In the third chapter of Genesis nowhere is the name of the tree given, or of its fruit. Commentators of the Bible for centuries have tried to prove that it was every kind, from the citron to the date, hut have agreed that it could not have been an apple, ior the apple is not an Oriental fruit. Now, at last, the researchers have cleared up the difficulty and become able to explain in an unmistakable way, by a picture, that it was not an apple at all. In excavations at the site of Dura Europos, on the western branch of the Euphrates River, in Asia AI inor, an expedition working under the joint auspices of Yale University and tho French Academy of Inscriptions found a concealed Christian chapel. From a scene on the wall it is certain that this chapel dated back earlier than 232 A.D.—that is, the first part of tho Third Christian Century. On one wall of this chapel was a drawing coloured red in which it was possible, -notwithstanding the lapse of 17 centuries, to discern the figure of a man and a woman standing beneath a tree bearing fruit. It was plain that here was a picture of Adam and Eve. But what was the fruit? _it was apparent to the archaeologists that the fruit on the tree which stood between Adam and Eve was the pomegranate, and further evidence led to the conclusion that the tradition existing in those ancient days was that Eve gave Adam a pomegranate from tho tree. The identification of the fruit of the forbidden tree with_ tho pomegranate is quite in accord with the story, and with the history of that fruit. It is one of the oldest fruits on earth, remains of..pomegranates .being ipjum-is

the pleistocene stratum of the earth’s surface with relics antedating the human race. _ . It is a common Oriental fruit, and is mentioned in the Bible frequently. It was an important fruit in the mind of the people of the Near East, on account of its numerous seeds. It was a symbol of fertility. Even to-day there it plays an important part in religious ceremonials, especially at weddings. How then did .the idea arise that it was an apple which Eve gave to Adam P It probably arose from a very simple misunderstanding, or careless reading, which once committed became fixed in the popular mind in a day when there were few Biblical manuscripts. The Latin name for pomegranate is Pomum granatum, a _ seedy _ apple. The Hebrew word for it is Rimmon. If some commentator, writing in Latin, wrote on the margin of his Bible in connection with the story of Adam and Eve that the forbidden fruit was a pomegranate it was very simple lor some careless reader _to stop at the word Pomum, meaning apple, and thereafter claim that Eve’s fruit was an apple. A number of the obscure passages in Scripture itself have been claimed by scholars to be due to errors quite as simple as this. All the kncsvledge of the Bible which most Christian peoples had for centuries was that conveyed in sermons, for the Bible was not, of course, available in printed form until Christianity was more than 1,000 years old. In the light of this latest discovery at Dura Europos, it may be concluded that side by side -with the written text of Scripture a tradition had grown up and was very widespread that the forbidden fruit was none other than the pomegranate, and that no one doubted it during the early centuries. So it appears that the apple, to-day the most common of all the world’s fruits, could not well have been the fruit of Paradise, especially because there were no apples in that part of the world in very ancient times. And the Creation story is admittedly very old. But the pomegranate was there. It fits in splendidly as a symbol of sex and fertility, both of which are entwined with the story of the Pall of Man from his pristine innocence.