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Apples are cleaner and easier to eat without needing much "cleaning" attention. Figs require a lot of work and are not the most pleasant looking.

We can never know for sure. The reason it is commonly imagined or illustrated as an apple is that it was depicted as an apple in European Renaissance art. Probably because it was a fruit that was common in Europe. A fig is more Middle-Eastern. Thus, it may more likely have been a fig, depending on where you think the historical Garden of Eden was. They may have also used the apple in European Renaissance depictions because the apple already had mythological significance in Greek, Norse, Germanic, and other pagan storytelling traditions. It's similar to how Jesus is painted sometimes as looking like a northern European. It's not literal, it just helps translate the story into a particular culture.

I feel like it may not be a fruit of what we have come to know. Just like how the term seed can refer to a plant or a child. They ate of the fruit, but which exactly?

Since I was a child I was always told it's an apple. But in the bible it is not mentioned whether it's an apple or a fig. So it's hard to know for sure.

It wasn't stated in the Bible as an Apple or A fig. It was only know to be the three of knowledge. It might also be traced to Solomon where Apple was mentioned. Maybe that where the whole idea of apple came from. Just my opinion.

The last time I checked, researchers and anthropologists haven't been able to determine the actual fruit, but some scholars say its species is closer to a banana than an apple.

I was told that it was an apple but I guess we will never be sure about it. I was also curious to know why the author chose fig.

Even in Qur'an the type of the fruit was not mentioned. However I don't think we will ever know because the aim of telling the story of Adam was not in the kind of fruit but in the results of the disobedience of God. Soo a fig or an apple it doesn't really matters.

Apple being the common fruit might have entered the folklores and still exists. There is no counterevidence so we still believe it.

Lhammamy wrote: ↑27 Aug 2020, 14:17 Even in Qur'an the type of the fruit was not mentioned. However I don't think we will ever know because the aim of telling the story of Adam was not in the kind of fruit but in the results of the disobedience of God. Soo a fig or an apple it doesn't really matters.

Lhammamy, that is an excellent point. Here we've been going on about the type of fruit, and you get to the heart of the matter. I really appreciate your comment.

Lee

As a child we were told or taught that it was an apple even in some christian books, they draw an apple and that's wrong cause nowhere in the bible has it ever said they ate an apple, i dont think we are ever going to know what fruit it was that they ate.

It's neither an apple nor from a fig tree because it's not specify in the scriptures which one.

The Bible didn't give a record of the specific fruit, but "the forbidden fruit" The fruit is commonly mistaking to apple fruit.

My grandpa used to say that was going to be a question he asked St. Paul when he reached the pearly gates. In my opinion, the apple was put in as a place holder. An apple is probably the most well known and eaten fruit that grows on trees. It's easy to see yourself eating an apple. I have never eaten a fig. I don't think the fig is as popular as an apple or orange. Peeling an orange would be something else to stop Adam and Eve from finishing the deed of eating the fruit. Sometimes if you are delayed in doing something you shouldn't, you don't end up doing it.

So in the original Hebrew Bible, the word 'peri' is used meaning generic fruit. When the scripture was later translated into Latin 'peri' became 'malus'. 'Malus' was a pun, meaning both evil and any fleshy seed-bearing fruit. For example, an apple is a type of 'malus', but so is a fig, a grape, and a pomegranate. Scholars have made arguments for each of these (and more) being the forbidden fruit.

One of the main reasons why apple is assumed to be the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was Milton. In Paradise lost he continued to refer to the forbidden fruit as malus. During his time, the meaning of malus was still equivocal. It could refer to either the apple or to any fleshy seed-bearing fruit. As a popularly accepted influential book, it was its later readers that started to associate 'malus' with 'Malus pumila' the scientific name for the common apple.