Was Eden’s apple just a metaphor?

#maklelan2529

[theoutspokenhumanist]

It's good to see a young person reaching out for information, rather than simply accepting what they have been told.

[JarrodFrates]

This is why etymology is so important. Many people think of maize when someone mentions corn, but corn has also referred to several other grains. It also refers to small objects such as peppercorns and the large salt crystals used to cure beef to make corned beef. Placing a word in its historical context adds depth and can dramatically change the meaning of a phrase.

[rjamesyork]

“People come up with silly ideas” could be the theme of this entire channel.

[SterlingTate]

This makes me want to get a soda, by soda i mean coke, and by coke i mean Sprite.

[auroraasleep]

I stand by my 11 year old's assessment: God is a bad pet owner and should have put up the flaming sword fence first because telling a clever ape not to do something, and then leaving them unsupervised is never going to end well, especially when it has to do with food and fairness. (monkey/grape).

[noahroad]

I think the Bible has become a lot more interesting after hearing Dan speak about it over the last year.. especially in regards to the role that the divine council plays in the interaction between “G-d” and man. It’s been a real breakthrough experience for me.

[Jspencer]

I always took it as an allegory to mean, once upon a time we were no different to the beasts and did not really know the difference between right and wrong, we just did whatever was needed for our small social group to survive. Then civilisation sprung up which meant interacting with many more people and traders, who we did not know, and our acts and interactions had a much wider impact, thus we began (or leaders began) to build a moral compass. And this story is a reminder that we are no longer beasts and need to know the difference between good and bad.

[magister]

In Latin, both "Evil" and "Apple" are spelled "Malum, " but one is pronounced with a long "a" and the other with a short "a." It was still close enough to inspire a very common visual pun though. Throughout the Latin speaking Western church there was a long history of portraying it as an evil/apple tree. In the Greek speaking East, artists tended to prefer depicting it as a Fig (inspired by the closest leaves for making the first clothes) or a pomegranate (sometimes thought to be an allusion to the myth of Hades and Persephone).

[annepoitrineau]

in fact, Jewish society went from hunter gatherer (the land is not possessed and people are nomadic, not too many children as you do not need labour, and being nomadic with many kids is complicated) to farmers: land is owned, and you need a lot of babies to work the land. As land is owned, it will also be inherited, and this means controlling who the women have children with, so that the inheritance stays in the amily. All the same...splitting the farm between many children would result in the farm not being viable, so superfluous childre were sent off to create their own farms. Hence the advance of the Beaker people across Europe (plenty of other examples are available)

[noahhepler]

Hi! Long time listener and first time commenter!
Thank you, Dan, for your work and example.

I have one footnote to add - though I should also say that I understand this is beyond the scope of the video. To give some context, I have a PhD in Historical Theology, and I focused on Augustine.
Augustine indeed has some odd views about sex (he's a citizen of the Roman Empire, after all), but for him, Concupiscence was a broader category than sex - it is really about all desire and the human will. Augustine let his Pelagian opponents (especially Julian of Eclanum) situate the debate around sex. Julian had hoped to paint Augustine as a closeted Manichean(the group was opposed to sex, and Augustine had been a member of the group when he was younger). But Augustine is trying to demonstrate that we suffer from ignorance and weakness - and this shows in the human will's inability to make things happen even if we want them to happen. Garry Wills (in Augustine, A Life) points out that Augustine makes more use of erectile dysfunction as his example than just sexual lust.

[annepoitrineau]

In French too, it is an apple. I think this has to do with the fact that the apple is the "prototype" (see prototype theory in linguistics) of a medieval European fruit (found in all European countries). But I like the malum/malus Latin explanation a lot.

[BobMueller]

I'm still trying to figure out why so much early Eden artwork shows Adam & Eve with belly buttons.

[dreamer]

I just assumed it was a metaphor for free will. They get free will and get punished for it. Before that they were more like the animals god created.

[Tmanaz]

It seems comical to think that there was a time when people were having sex, but had no sexual desire.

[Gdwmartin]

I always thought that the story was a metaphor around a person becoming self aware as they grew from an infant, to a toddler. to a child and so on. When you are an infant you are completely innocent, even as a toddler you have a limited sense of the world and its social mores. Little kids even 3 years old will run around half clothed or even naked with no shame at their nakedness. As they age they become more and more self aware and then feel shame and embarrassment and their behavior changes.

Likewise Adam and Eve in the beginning are like little children or even animals. Completely unaware of their nakedness, they are completely innocent. They eat the fruit and become aware and feel ashamed or embarrassed at their behaviour.

[Nymaz]

Fun trivia, prior to the medieval period the "fruit" was most often depicted as a fig in artwork.

[grisflyt]

Dan already knows this. But I still want to add that Christians really had no option but to change the meaning of the story. Man wanting to become like the gods (in flesh) doesn't fit in with Christianity. Man wanting to become like the gods (hubris) is something out of Greek mythology.

[lancecjohnson]

I love the content you provide, and the fact that you're a comic book nerd like me is a bonus.

[zackzimmer]

If Adam and Eve didn’t know good and evil prior to the fruit, then how could they know it was bad to disobey god without eating the fruit?

[oldmanjenkins]

Good old Freud and his relationship with his mother. Then counter transferring it in his patients.