Many people believe the Bible says it was an apple that Adam and Eve ate in the garden. From Sunday School literature to children’s Bibles, they are filled with pictures of Adam and Eve getting into trouble while eating the big red forbidden fruit. Was Adam and Eve’s forbidden fruit really an apple?
The Fruit Of The Tree
All we know from scripture is that it was a fruit tree that Adam and Eve ate from. Nothing is said about the fruit being an apple. It’s one of the most common misconceptions about the Bible that you will find.
(Genesis 2:16-17) And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
(Genesis 3:6) When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Different Opinions About The Forbidden Fruit
You can find many different opinions from people on what they think the forbidden fruit was. Everything from an apple to a grape, fig, or pomegranate has been named. In this case we simply do not know what the fruit was. The Bible doesn’t say.
The Apple Rumor
So how did the idea that an apple was Adam and Eve’s forbidden fruit get started? Most research leads to it probably being a translation misunderstanding of a couple of Latin words that are very similar. Mali means evil, and malum means apple.
The “It was an apple rumor” became so widespread that even today we still call the larynx located in the human throat the Adam’s apple. Because the larynx tends to be larger in males, this led to the idea it was because the apple got stuck in Adam’s throat when he swallowed it.
