Forbidden fruit
Forbidden fruit is a name given to the fruit growing in the Garden of Eden which God commands mankind not to eat. In the biblical story, Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are exiled from Eden. As a metaphor outside of the Abrahamic religions the phrase typically refers to any indulgence or pleasure that is considered illegal or immoral. Biblical story. The story of the Book of Genesis places the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden where they may eat the  fruit of many trees, but are forbidden by God to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In Genesis 3, a serpent tempts the woman: Desiring this wisdom, the woman eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to the man who also eats it. They become aware of their "nakedness" and make fig-leaf clothes, and hide themselves when God approaches. When confronted, Adam tells God that Eve gave him the fruit to eat, and Eve tells God the serpent deceived her into eating it. God then curses the serpent, the woman then the man, and expels  the man and woman from the Garden before they ate of the tree of eternal life. Quranic story. According to the Quran, Surah Al-A'raf 7:19 describes Adam and his wife in Paradise where they may eat what is provided, except for one Tree they must not eat from, lest they be considered "Zalimun" (; wrongdoers). Surah Al-A'raf 7:20–22 describes () who whispers to Adam and his wife and deceives them. When they taste of the tree, their shame becomes manifest to them and they begin to cover themselves with leaves. Identifications and depictions. The word "fruit" appears in Hebrew as  פֶּ֫רִי ("pərî" ). As to which fruit may have been the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, possibilities include apple, grape, pomegranate, fig, carob, etrog or citron, pear, quince, and mushrooms. The pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch describes the tree of knowledge: "It was like a species of the Tamarind tree, bearing fruit which resembled grapes extremely fine; and its fragrance extended to a considerable distance. I exclaimed, How beautiful is this tree, and how delightful is its appearance!" (1 Enoch 31:4). In Islamic tradition, the fruit is commonly either identified with wheat or with grapevine. Apple. In Western Europe, the  fruit was often depicted as an apple. This was possibly because of a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – two unrelated words "mălum", a native Latin noun which means evil (from the adjective "malus"), and "mālum", another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means apple. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as "de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali" : "but of the tree [literally "wood" ] of knowledge of good and evil" ("mali" here is the genitive of "malum"). The larynx, specifically the laryngeal prominence that joins the thyroid cartilage, in the human throat is noticeably more prominent  in males and was consequently called an Adam's apple, from a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in Adam's throat as he swallowed it. Grape. Rabbi Meir says that the fruit was a grape, made into wine. The Zohar explains similarly that Noah attempted (but failed) to rectify the sin of Adam by using grape wine for holy purposes. The midrash of Bereishit Rabah states that the fruit was grape, or squeezed grapes (perhaps alluding to wine). Chapter 4 of 3 Baruch, also known as the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, designates the fruit  as the grape. 3 Baruch is a first to third century text that is either Christian or Jewish with Christian interpolations. Fig. The Bible states in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve had made their own fig leaf clothing: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles". Rabbi Nehemiah Hayyun supports the idea that the fruit was a fig, as it was from fig leaves that God made garments for Adam and Eve upon expelling them from the Garden. "By that  with which they were made low were they rectified." Since the fig is a long-standing symbol of female sexuality, it enjoyed a run as a favorite understudy to the apple as the forbidden fruit during the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo Buonarroti depicting it as such in his masterpiece fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Pomegranate. Proponents of the theory that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in what is now known as the Middle East suggest that the fruit was actually a pomegranate, a plant indigenous from Iran to the Himalayas and cultivated since ancient times. The association of  the pomegranate with knowledge of the underworld as provided in the Ancient Greek legend of Persephone may also have given rise to an association with knowledge of the otherworld, tying-in with knowledge that is forbidden to mortals. Also, it is believed Hades offered Persephone a pomegranate to force her to stay with him in the underworld. Hades is the Greek god of death and the Bible states that whoever eats the forbidden fruit shall die. Wheat. Rabbi Yehuda proposes that the fruit was wheat, because "a baby does not know to call its mother and father until it tastes  the taste of grain." In Hebrew, wheat is "khitah", which has been considered to be a pun on "khet", meaning "sin". Although commonly confused with a seed, in the study of botany a wheat berry is technically a simple fruit known as a caryopsis, which has the same structure as an apple. Just as an apple is a fleshy fruit that contains seeds, a grain is a dry fruit that absorbs water and contains a seed. The confusion comes from the fact that the fruit of a grass happens to have a form similar to some seeds. Mushroom. A fresco  in the 13th-century Plaincourault Abbey in France depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, flanking a Tree of Knowledge that has the appearance of a gigantic "Amanita muscaria", a psychoactive mushroom. Terence McKenna proposed that the forbidden fruit was a reference to psychotropic plants and fungi, specifically psilocybin mushrooms, which he theorized played a central role in the evolution of the human brain. Earlier, in a well-documented but heavily criticized study, John M. Allegro proposed the mushroom as the forbidden fruit. Banana. Several proponents of the theory exist dating from the thirteenth century. In Nathan HaMe’ati 's 13th century translation of Maimonides's work "The Medical Aphorisms of Moses", the banana is called the "apple of eden". In the sixteenth century, Menahem Lonzano considered it common knowledge in Syria and Egypt that the banana was the apple of Eden. Coco de mer. Charles George Gordon identified the forbiden fruit of the tree of knowledge with the coco de mer. Parallel concepts. Greek mythology. The similarities of the story to the story of Pandora's box were identified by early Christians such as Tertullian, Origen, and Gregory of Nazianzus.