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Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple
A "brisk and entertaining" ( Wall Street Journal ) journey into the mystery behind why the forbidden fruit became an apple, upending an explanation that stood for centuries.
How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.
Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for “fruit” in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon.
How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.
Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for “fruit” in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon.
232 pages, Hardcover
Published January 10, 2023
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May 15, 2023
From "Reading Religion," a publication of the American Academy of Religion:
How did the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil come to be known as an apple? Many scholars and non-scholars alike have suggested that the association was borne of a confusion between the Latin word malum, “apple,” and malus, “evil,” sometimes rendered malum depending on grammatical context. However, as Azzan Yadin-Israel points out in the introduction to Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple, the evidence for this hypothesis is scant at best. How, then, are we to understand the apple’s rise as the symbol of what is forbidden? The answer lies in art history and medieval shifts in semantics.
Yadin-Israel’s thesis is that “while scholars have sought to explain the apple’s rise in theological terms, it was actually an unintended consequence of two distinct historical developments: a series of semantic shifts and the proliferation of Fall of Man narratives in the European vernaculars” (2). Thus, in chapters 1 and 2, Yadin-Israel deconstructs the notion of the apple as the forbidden fruit using a two-fold approach. First, he demonstrates that ancient, late antique, and early medieval Jewish and Christian sources do not associate the fruit with an apple but instead opt for a fig or grape, with citrons, wheat shafts, dates, and other produce also making appearances. Secondly, he deconstructs the malum hypothesis, which was first challenged by Sir Thomas Browne in 1658 but remains a common argument today. Yadin-Israel does this by appeal to linguistics, but also by appeal to tradition; there simply is no known Latin textual tradition that addresses the ambiguity of malum or calls the forbidden fruit an apple, and prior to the 12th century, there is almost no mention of the forbidden fruit as an apple in either text or iconography in any language or medium. Rather, the fig tradition continued—that is, until the 12th century.
In chapters 3 and 4, Yadin-Israel offers an alternative narrative, one rooted in an analysis of almost 600 works of art and the cultural developments of medieval Europe, including shifts in semantics. In chapter 3, he carefully argues that “the apple . . . played no meaningful role in the Fall of Man iconography until its first sustained appearance, in twelfth-century France” (28), after which the tradition moved into England, Germany, the Low Countries, and Northern Italy (but not Southern Italy or Spain). He supports his claim using representative artworks from his assemblage of almost 600 works, all of which are available on the book’s companion website.
In chapter 4, Yadin-Israel explains why 12th century France was the historical and geographical context for the rise of the apple as the forbidden fruit, and why this association spread the way it did. In brief, pomum, “a fruit, specifically an orchard fruit,” was the most common Latin word for the forbidden fruit, and the Old French pom, “fruit,” is its etymological descendent. Through the process of semantic narrowing, at some point pom came to specify “apple.” Hence, over time, the Latin pomum, “fruit,” became the French pom, “apple.” As Medieval French exerted massive influence on English and German, these languages also experienced semantic narrowing, with both appel (English) and apfel (German) shifting from “fruit” to “apple.” At the same time, French illustrated manuscripts and textual traditions influenced biblical interpretation across the region. Once the association of the forbidden fruit with an apple took hold, it expanded greatly, in part due to its proliferation in art, but also because people were engaging the Fall of Man narrative in their common vernaculars.
The association of the fruit with an apple did not take hold in Spain and Southern Italy literally because of semantics. The pomum to pom shift simply did not happen in their languages, because the Italian and Spanish words for apple—mela and manzana, respectively—did not originally denote “fruit.” However, the diverse dialects of Northern Italy did undergo a semantic narrowing from the Latin pomum, “fruit,” to the Tuscan pomo, “apple,” partly under the influence of French, an influence that did not extend far past the Alps. Furthermore, vernacular translations of the Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, were not popular in Italy and were met with hostility in Spain, thus reducing the impact of French translation and iconographic traditions on Italian and Spanish biblical interpretation.
Overall, Yadin-Israel’s Temptation Transformed is an accessible, well-argued, well-researched book and a testament to the power of interdisciplinary work to clarify age-old conundrums. Though brief (82 pages plus 12 color plates and 99 pages of end-matter), it covers a lot of terrain in terms of timespan (the ancient, late antique, and medieval periods), geography (mainland Europe), and media (texts and images), along with the pertinent languages. This book is a must-read for those interested in the mechanisms by which religious ideas and iconography develop, not only because it is a model case study, but also because it challenges “the assumption that scholars ought to explain religious phenomena by means of other religious phenomena” (79) rather than through the mundane realities of human experience, which includes linguistic change. More specifically, this book is a must-read for those interested in the history of Jewish and Christian biblical interpretation, especially of Genesis 3. Finally, Yadin-Israel’s appendix Inventory of Fall of Man Scenes and its companion website are a gift to art lovers everywhere and ought not be overlooked.
How did the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil come to be known as an apple? Many scholars and non-scholars alike have suggested that the association was borne of a confusion between the Latin word malum, “apple,” and malus, “evil,” sometimes rendered malum depending on grammatical context. However, as Azzan Yadin-Israel points out in the introduction to Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple, the evidence for this hypothesis is scant at best. How, then, are we to understand the apple’s rise as the symbol of what is forbidden? The answer lies in art history and medieval shifts in semantics.
Yadin-Israel’s thesis is that “while scholars have sought to explain the apple’s rise in theological terms, it was actually an unintended consequence of two distinct historical developments: a series of semantic shifts and the proliferation of Fall of Man narratives in the European vernaculars” (2). Thus, in chapters 1 and 2, Yadin-Israel deconstructs the notion of the apple as the forbidden fruit using a two-fold approach. First, he demonstrates that ancient, late antique, and early medieval Jewish and Christian sources do not associate the fruit with an apple but instead opt for a fig or grape, with citrons, wheat shafts, dates, and other produce also making appearances. Secondly, he deconstructs the malum hypothesis, which was first challenged by Sir Thomas Browne in 1658 but remains a common argument today. Yadin-Israel does this by appeal to linguistics, but also by appeal to tradition; there simply is no known Latin textual tradition that addresses the ambiguity of malum or calls the forbidden fruit an apple, and prior to the 12th century, there is almost no mention of the forbidden fruit as an apple in either text or iconography in any language or medium. Rather, the fig tradition continued—that is, until the 12th century.
In chapters 3 and 4, Yadin-Israel offers an alternative narrative, one rooted in an analysis of almost 600 works of art and the cultural developments of medieval Europe, including shifts in semantics. In chapter 3, he carefully argues that “the apple . . . played no meaningful role in the Fall of Man iconography until its first sustained appearance, in twelfth-century France” (28), after which the tradition moved into England, Germany, the Low Countries, and Northern Italy (but not Southern Italy or Spain). He supports his claim using representative artworks from his assemblage of almost 600 works, all of which are available on the book’s companion website.
In chapter 4, Yadin-Israel explains why 12th century France was the historical and geographical context for the rise of the apple as the forbidden fruit, and why this association spread the way it did. In brief, pomum, “a fruit, specifically an orchard fruit,” was the most common Latin word for the forbidden fruit, and the Old French pom, “fruit,” is its etymological descendent. Through the process of semantic narrowing, at some point pom came to specify “apple.” Hence, over time, the Latin pomum, “fruit,” became the French pom, “apple.” As Medieval French exerted massive influence on English and German, these languages also experienced semantic narrowing, with both appel (English) and apfel (German) shifting from “fruit” to “apple.” At the same time, French illustrated manuscripts and textual traditions influenced biblical interpretation across the region. Once the association of the forbidden fruit with an apple took hold, it expanded greatly, in part due to its proliferation in art, but also because people were engaging the Fall of Man narrative in their common vernaculars.
The association of the fruit with an apple did not take hold in Spain and Southern Italy literally because of semantics. The pomum to pom shift simply did not happen in their languages, because the Italian and Spanish words for apple—mela and manzana, respectively—did not originally denote “fruit.” However, the diverse dialects of Northern Italy did undergo a semantic narrowing from the Latin pomum, “fruit,” to the Tuscan pomo, “apple,” partly under the influence of French, an influence that did not extend far past the Alps. Furthermore, vernacular translations of the Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, were not popular in Italy and were met with hostility in Spain, thus reducing the impact of French translation and iconographic traditions on Italian and Spanish biblical interpretation.
Overall, Yadin-Israel’s Temptation Transformed is an accessible, well-argued, well-researched book and a testament to the power of interdisciplinary work to clarify age-old conundrums. Though brief (82 pages plus 12 color plates and 99 pages of end-matter), it covers a lot of terrain in terms of timespan (the ancient, late antique, and medieval periods), geography (mainland Europe), and media (texts and images), along with the pertinent languages. This book is a must-read for those interested in the mechanisms by which religious ideas and iconography develop, not only because it is a model case study, but also because it challenges “the assumption that scholars ought to explain religious phenomena by means of other religious phenomena” (79) rather than through the mundane realities of human experience, which includes linguistic change. More specifically, this book is a must-read for those interested in the history of Jewish and Christian biblical interpretation, especially of Genesis 3. Finally, Yadin-Israel’s appendix Inventory of Fall of Man Scenes and its companion website are a gift to art lovers everywhere and ought not be overlooked.
December 9, 2023
Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple (The University of Chicago Press, 2022), by Azzan Yadin-Israel
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein (Rachack Review)
Professor Azzan Yadin-Israel's latest work is a fascinating exploration that delves into the evolution of a concept taken for granted in popular discourse. The Biblical account of Adam and Eve consuming the Forbidden Fruit leaves the specific identity of this fruit shrouded in the generic term pri, which simply means "fruit" in Hebrew. However, over time, this “fruit” has been widely perceived as an apple in pop culture. In this work, Yadin-Israel meticulously unravels the roots of this prevalent notion through an in-depth scholarly investigation.
Conventional wisdom says that the apple came to be understood as the Forbidden Fruit because the Latin word malum means “evil,” and its homonym malum (cognate with the English word melon) means “apple.” The popular theory goes that since Adam and Eve sinning by eating this fruit wrought evil upon the world, the very fruit in question must have been an apple which is linguistically associated with “evil,” i.e. the apple — because of the aforementioned homonym.
However, Yadin-Israel decisively debunks this theory by showing that it remains unsubstantial when one studies early Latin commentators to the Bible. Through a masterful grasp of textual, literary, visual, and artistic references to the Fall of Man, the author eruditely navigates through proofs and counter-proofs, while conclusively discrediting the unsubstantiated Latin-based understanding.
The one attractive point of the malum theory is that the tradition associating the fruit with the apple is unknown in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek sources — thus lending credit to the notion that it must have sprung up from something related to Latin. However, the author rejects this point by noting that early Latin authors rarely referred to the Forbidden Fruit by the Latin term malum, instead using more generic words like fructus (“fruit”).
After rejecting this folk explanation, the author harnesses a wide array of sources in order to pinpoint exactly when and where the notion that Forbidden Fruit was an apple came into existence. At that point, he shifts the focus to iconographic and artistic representations of the Fall of Man, tracing the emergence of the apple in such depictions to 12th-century France. Prior to this period, visual portrayals of the Forbidden Fruit simply did not feature apples.
Yadin-Israel intriguingly connects the rise of the apple theory in 12th-century France to the evolving semantic meaning of the French word pomme, transitioning from a generic term for "fruit" to specifically denoting an "apple." Similar semantic shifts later occurred in Germanic languages like German and English, whereby apple/apfel transitioned from a generic word for “fruit” to a word that specifically means “apple.” The author makes the strong case that it was these internal semantic shifts within various European languages that actually lead to the widespread misconception regarding the Forbidden Fruit's identity. In other words, once the word for “fruit” came to specifically mean “apple,” people began to think that “forbidden fruit” actually just meant “forbidden apple.”
Before the apple theory gained traction and wide acceptance, there were earlier traditions that identify the fruit as something else. For example, various Jewish traditions (found in rabbinic sources, as well as in apocryphal literature) identify the Forbidden Fruit as either a grape, fig, wheat, or citron. These traditions were also adopted by early Christian sources, who further conjectured that the fruit in question might have been a pomegranate (a word incidentally cognate with the French pomme mentioned above). Yadin-Israel meticulously documents these and other alternative theories as to the identity of the fruit in question, including less popular suggestions like the date and the banana.
This book is a testament to the value of rigorous scholarship, highlighting that nothing should be taken for granted, but rather all assumptions could and should be called into question. It also illustrates the idea that scholarship should not be confined to a single field, but rather flourishes in multi-disciplinary milieu. Yet, this book is written in easy English rather than dense academic jargon. It is also relatively short — I read it in one sitting. Indeed, this book presents a fascinating scholarly narrative that reads like a mystery novel, with the author acting like a detective uncovering the origins of the popular wisdom.
This book also includes beautiful pictures from various libraries that make up some of the iconographic evidence from which the author draws. Accompanying these stunning visuals are extensive endnotes and a bibliography that aid the reader in delving further into the topic. Moreover, the book goes beyond its pages, offering a companion website, https://treeofknowledgeart.com/ where the author has collated hundreds of additional iconographic depictions of the Tree of Knowledge, enriching the reader's exploration further.
In essence, Temptation Transformed invites readers on a journey through the annals of history, challenging preconceived notions, and revealing the intricate story behind the genesis of a pervasive cultural belief.
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein (Rachack Review)
Professor Azzan Yadin-Israel's latest work is a fascinating exploration that delves into the evolution of a concept taken for granted in popular discourse. The Biblical account of Adam and Eve consuming the Forbidden Fruit leaves the specific identity of this fruit shrouded in the generic term pri, which simply means "fruit" in Hebrew. However, over time, this “fruit” has been widely perceived as an apple in pop culture. In this work, Yadin-Israel meticulously unravels the roots of this prevalent notion through an in-depth scholarly investigation.
Conventional wisdom says that the apple came to be understood as the Forbidden Fruit because the Latin word malum means “evil,” and its homonym malum (cognate with the English word melon) means “apple.” The popular theory goes that since Adam and Eve sinning by eating this fruit wrought evil upon the world, the very fruit in question must have been an apple which is linguistically associated with “evil,” i.e. the apple — because of the aforementioned homonym.
However, Yadin-Israel decisively debunks this theory by showing that it remains unsubstantial when one studies early Latin commentators to the Bible. Through a masterful grasp of textual, literary, visual, and artistic references to the Fall of Man, the author eruditely navigates through proofs and counter-proofs, while conclusively discrediting the unsubstantiated Latin-based understanding.
The one attractive point of the malum theory is that the tradition associating the fruit with the apple is unknown in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek sources — thus lending credit to the notion that it must have sprung up from something related to Latin. However, the author rejects this point by noting that early Latin authors rarely referred to the Forbidden Fruit by the Latin term malum, instead using more generic words like fructus (“fruit”).
After rejecting this folk explanation, the author harnesses a wide array of sources in order to pinpoint exactly when and where the notion that Forbidden Fruit was an apple came into existence. At that point, he shifts the focus to iconographic and artistic representations of the Fall of Man, tracing the emergence of the apple in such depictions to 12th-century France. Prior to this period, visual portrayals of the Forbidden Fruit simply did not feature apples.
Yadin-Israel intriguingly connects the rise of the apple theory in 12th-century France to the evolving semantic meaning of the French word pomme, transitioning from a generic term for "fruit" to specifically denoting an "apple." Similar semantic shifts later occurred in Germanic languages like German and English, whereby apple/apfel transitioned from a generic word for “fruit” to a word that specifically means “apple.” The author makes the strong case that it was these internal semantic shifts within various European languages that actually lead to the widespread misconception regarding the Forbidden Fruit's identity. In other words, once the word for “fruit” came to specifically mean “apple,” people began to think that “forbidden fruit” actually just meant “forbidden apple.”
Before the apple theory gained traction and wide acceptance, there were earlier traditions that identify the fruit as something else. For example, various Jewish traditions (found in rabbinic sources, as well as in apocryphal literature) identify the Forbidden Fruit as either a grape, fig, wheat, or citron. These traditions were also adopted by early Christian sources, who further conjectured that the fruit in question might have been a pomegranate (a word incidentally cognate with the French pomme mentioned above). Yadin-Israel meticulously documents these and other alternative theories as to the identity of the fruit in question, including less popular suggestions like the date and the banana.
This book is a testament to the value of rigorous scholarship, highlighting that nothing should be taken for granted, but rather all assumptions could and should be called into question. It also illustrates the idea that scholarship should not be confined to a single field, but rather flourishes in multi-disciplinary milieu. Yet, this book is written in easy English rather than dense academic jargon. It is also relatively short — I read it in one sitting. Indeed, this book presents a fascinating scholarly narrative that reads like a mystery novel, with the author acting like a detective uncovering the origins of the popular wisdom.
This book also includes beautiful pictures from various libraries that make up some of the iconographic evidence from which the author draws. Accompanying these stunning visuals are extensive endnotes and a bibliography that aid the reader in delving further into the topic. Moreover, the book goes beyond its pages, offering a companion website, https://treeofknowledgeart.com/ where the author has collated hundreds of additional iconographic depictions of the Tree of Knowledge, enriching the reader's exploration further.
In essence, Temptation Transformed invites readers on a journey through the annals of history, challenging preconceived notions, and revealing the intricate story behind the genesis of a pervasive cultural belief.
Read
February 22, 2024The Hebrew word used in the Bible for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which was found in the Garden of Eden, is peri, a generic word meaning any kind of fruit. Yet, when most people think of the story, they visualize that fruit as an apple. As Azzan Yadin-Israel notes in “Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Become an Apple” (The University of Chicago Press), that was a relatively new development since there was little to no mention of the apple in this context before the 12th century. In his short work, Yadin-Israel, a professor of Jewish studies and classics at Rutgers University, uses written texts and visual imagery to determine when and why that change occurred.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews