Paradise found: The apple is not forbidden fruit, it is the fruit of our New England homes

In honor of the Cider Days celebrations this weekend, I share with readers this apple bread recipe, one of my standbys, which was adapted from a zucchini recipe given to me by a neighbor decades ago.

In honor of the Cider Days celebrations this weekend, I share with readers this apple bread recipe, one of my standbys, which was adapted from a zucchini recipe given to me by a neighbor decades ago. PHOTO BY TINKY WEISBLAT

A few years ago, I was flummoxed to learn that it says nowhere in the Hebrew Bible that the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve evicted from the Garden of Eden was an apple. Despite our common conception, what the first couple ate was identified merely as “fruit.”

A few years ago, I was flummoxed to learn that it says nowhere in the Hebrew Bible that the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve evicted from the Garden of Eden was an apple. Despite our common conception, what the first couple ate was identified merely as “fruit.” PHOTO BY TINKY WEISBLAT

Cider maker Peter Mitchell at Cider Days 2023. This coming weekend marks the 30th anniversary of Franklin County Cider Days.

Cider maker Peter Mitchell at Cider Days 2023. This coming weekend marks the 30th anniversary of Franklin County Cider Days. CONTRIBUTED

This painting by Jan the Elder Brueghel is titled “The Temptation in the Garden of Eden.”

This painting by Jan the Elder Brueghel is titled “The Temptation in the Garden of Eden.”

By TINKY WEISBLAT

For the Recorder

Published: 10-28-2024 12:10 PM

Apples are on my mind. They’re everywhere at this time of year. This coming weekend marks the 30th anniversary of Franklin County Cider Days.

A few years ago, I was flummoxed to learn that it says nowhere in the Hebrew Bible that the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve evicted from the Garden of Eden was an apple. Despite our common conception, what the first couple ate was identified merely as “fruit.”

In fact, it’s likely that it was not an apple. Although apples grow in parts of the Middle East (where Eden may have been located), they tend to be found at higher elevations. Scholars believe that Eden was located at the juncture of rivers, perhaps the Tigris and the Euphrates. That area is below sea level.

Some Biblical experts believe that the forbidden tree in Eden was a fig tree. Figs are a distinct possibility. The original text has the couple covering themselves with fig leaves once they “discovered” their nakedness. We know, therefore, that figs were at hand. And a fig is a temptingly juicy, voluptuous fruit.

Some believe that the fruit in question was a pomegranate. Personally, I find pomegranates too difficult to deal with to put much stock in that possibility. You don’t just bite into them. You cut them open and carefully extract their seeds. That’s a lot of work for forbidden fruit.

I’m neither a botanist nor a Biblical scholar, however, so my opinion probably doesn’t matter.

In a way, it doesn’t really matter which fruit Adam and Eve succumbed to, or where their garden was located. When we search for Eden in a specific location, we miss the point of the story. Eden was and is a dream, an archetype, a Platonic ideal. We aren’t supposed to find it.

If we believe the story in the Bible, that garden is lost to humanity forever. We may be better off for having lost it. Knowledge is a wonderful thing.

In a way, Eden resembles Bountiful, Texas, the focal point of Horton Foote’s 1953 drama “The Trip to Bountiful.”

Carrie Watts, the elderly heroine of that play, longs to leave her unhappy life in Houston with her milquetoast son and harpy daughter-in-law. She wants to return to her childhood home in the quiet town of Bountiful.

To Carrie, Bountiful symbolizes youth, freedom and love. Unfortunately, when she escapes from her relatives and makes her way there, she finds that Bountiful no longer exists. It is a casualty of the deprivations of the Great Depression and the exodus of young men in World War II.

Nevertheless, when Carrie’s son and daughter-in-law arrive to retrieve her, the place has made its mark on all of them. The play leaves the audience with the hope that perhaps they will work harder to create a true home in Houston together.

Perhaps we, like Carrie, can better serve ourselves and our world by reaching our own Bountifuls/Edens and then letting them go. We aren’t obliged to let apples go, however.

Whether Eden was a real place or not, and whatever the fruit in it may have been, Biblical scholar Brook Wilensky-Lanford endorses the symbolism of the apple. Wilensky-Lanford wrote a book (cleverly titled “Paradise Lust”) about modern-day searchers for Eden. She can therefore speak with some authority on the matter.

“I happen to find the abundant variety of interpretations [of where Eden might have been] not disheartening, but liberating. And for that reading of the Garden of Eden, I’ve come back around to the apple. For me, it’s actually the perfect fruit of the Tree of Knowledge,” she wrote in a piece for The Huffington Post.

She enthused about the enormous variety of apples found on earth and about the complexity of apples and apple trees. “Scientists recently mapped the genome of a Gala apple,” she noted, “and it had more chromosomes than any other known plant, more possible variations even than the human genome.”

She went on to cite the fact, known to our local fruit growers, that if you emulate Johnny Appleseed and try to grow an apple tree from seeds, you don’t necessarily get the same kind of tree that produced the seed.

“Much like faith, you never know what you’re going to plant. Sow the same seed many times, as with the same verse of Genesis, and you’ll come up with as many variations,” she wrote.

I love the intersection of faith and apples at this time of year, when our orchards embody the idea of Bountiful (and perhaps even Eden). I dare you to bite into a crisp, juicy apple and not feel that home and happiness are somewhere nearby.

The apple is not forbidden fruit. It is the fruit of our New England homes.

Of course, as a food writer, I also encourage you to cook and bake with apples. The recipe below is one of my standbys, adapted from a zucchini recipe given to me by a neighbor decades ago.

I’ll be signing cookbooks for Cider Days this Saturday, Nov. 2, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Headwater Cider on Forget Road in my own bountiful hometown, Hawley. Stop by to sample sips from cideries (including Headwater!) and get a nibble from me. For a full listing of Cider Days activities, visit ciderdays.org.

Eat Me! Apple Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup canola oil

1 1/2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed

3 eggs

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups grated raw apple (packed a bit into the measuring cup)

1 cup raisins

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease two loaf pans. Combine the oil and sugar, and beat in the eggs. Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the previous mixture.

Stir in the apples, raisins, and nuts (if desired). Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (about 45 to 60 minutes).

Makes 2 loaves.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.