THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11955, 14 March 1917, Page 7

THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

j WHERE DTD THE APPLE | ORIGINATE? ; A TRANSLATOR'S MISTAKE. A eorrespondemi wrote to the New York ".Sun''' lately asking how the apple came to be named as the fruit of the temptation in the Garden of EEden when the original Hebrew text and all of the translations speak only ol' the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It seemed that none of the Biblical authorities had offered any answer as far as was able to learn. There is an answer, however and ■that a very simple one. which will probably satisfy this inquirer and many others who might ask the same question.

! ' It is true that in the Hebrew th© j words are " Etz "Peri," the fruit of j the tree, and the Greek and Latin ver- j sions so translate them. The "Vulgate | uses the word fruemm " for fruit, j and this, could not in any way be mis- J I token for the specific iruit apple. Tt | is further admitted by scholars who j hold that the 'Paradise of the. Bible. J which is also described upon clay tab- j : leis of BabyloniiVo literature, was Jo- j cated near the Euphrates and the Ti- j gris, or in a tropical country, where j I no apples could possibly grow, so that j the fruit of this tree coulcl not have j iboen a a .'ij>p!e. . i Iu a table lately translated, which j originated in Nippur, and is now in j i tho Museum of the (:r>ivor«ny of j Pennsylvania-, iu Philadelphia the ( fruit: is described a*. the fruit J of the cassia plant, according to i J)r LandonV. translation. fl'iis is possible for that plant is well known in tho region. But 'rhe (lUCFtinn of how the apple came into the story is still unanswered. and no tablet will answer it, for none could mention a fruit- unknown to the Babylonians, not growing in their country. ; We have to go far a.iield to a.-err- J tain the origin of the error, for the ! use of t.lie word apple is an error. It ! came about, from the confusion of two words in the Latin, "Fnvetum"' means fruit, and so doe.s " ])unaii:j.'' .But j potrinm" also means apple, and some ancient scholar filled with Latin wonts wrote " pomnm '' instead of " irnetum '' in translating this pnsagc, and it was interpreted as .specific, j namely, apple, instead of general; | that is, fruit. • acre is, however, another rea r -;v> for this confusion, and the persistence! of the idea is shown in man)- of the painting.-, by the old masters, who sometimes depict a tree laden with apples from which Eve has jusr. picked one, and is handing i'! to Adam.

The apple phiyn a great part in the mvtnology oi" the (Jreeks and Romans where wo hud the apples of Mesperides and the golden apple offered to ihe miHt- benutdul oi the goddesses, which 'started all that famous trouble for Paris, ending i;i the siego and destruction of Trov. The coalu.sion of ideas probably arose from the association of the apple with critical turns in the affairs of men and suggested at ieast the specific interpretation or translation of fructum" or pomtim " by ''apple." The fact is that- as far as the Bible itself goes no specilic fruit is mentioned, and if is spoken of only as tho tree of tho knowledge of gcd and evil. _ .But' there is another fruit- tree mentioned, and this is the lig tree, for in Genesis iii., 7, it is said, '■ And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.Possibly <on tbi.s account it is a Hebrew tradition that Eve ate of the fig tree, but that, has never been introduced into Biblical text.

r ihe lig tree plays a. very -important part in the myths ol many ancient nat'.ops. "\\lien Ulysses was sucked iu bv tho whirlpool of Charybdis ho grasped. the limb of a wild tig tree that' overhung the pool. In legend the Holy Family rested under a lie tree on their. journey.to Egypt. The fruitless fig tree of Jesuy is one of the important elements in that parable. Even the Egyptians had a legend that Jsis j'ocovort'd all of Osiris except one part, ,and that was replaced hv abit of fig wood. One of the wall paintings at Thebes shows the souh- of the departed partaking of tile fruit of ahg tree ju Paradise. The Romans held, that a ng tree sheltered Romulus and Bemus. The Eieus relfdosa or religious hg tree of India is sacred find none i s allowed to fell it- it r consulted as ,an oracle, and ii j s believed that when Brahma assumed human fonn a blossom of th 0 lif tree was dropped from heaven "to "tempt

The idea of the tree „f tho knov ,_ o< go oi good and evil, or wisdom tJiee, as it has been called, has been' tenned a inooii myth by some scholar. hey assert that the moon is most otten pictured on earth as a Ir ( '°; |/ • , iju hylonian s speak of a, tieo bndu at toe mouth of the EuphrauM ivliica spok.! to its ,v.»r--liij>-•ii <•'■ i Is Wisdom tree the I'nrl s f + he new mooj]. old Odin, chief „od of the beandmavians, hung head (Owmvard to extract tho words of wisdom.

Jupiter had his "speaking oak" it is a traditional seat of knowledge and re erred to in tho story of Peter, i , J" S " lomnr . v durinpr tho three clays ot tho moon's darkness, but when the cock crew he remembered his Lord In India the bo-tree of knowledge tho shelter oi Buddha for tweniveight days (the length of the lunar month) until he received ],i, s - illumination of wistiom. The sacred oaks of l>odona m Greece were ainono- the, very earliest of Greek bobhung with hells whose tinklino- oracles were interpreted by tho priests. Iho tile log is of course a relic of tho bcandinavian worship of the sacred ash tree, and was not at all Christian m origin, having been known to the Morsomen long before their conversion to Christianity. It is therefore plain that the. free of knowledge ot good and evil has m-anv parallels in the faiths of "ancient nations, and that it was un error ever to think that it could have been an apple tree or that the fruit of tho temptation was an .apple.