“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
Genesis 3:1
In the middle of Eden was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but in fact, the book of Genesis never names its fruit the apple. It only came into being in the 4th-century AD when Pope Damasus ordered his scholar of scripture, Jerome, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin. Jerome’s 15-year project, the Vulgate, would translate the Hebrew Bible’s word “peri”, the fruit hanging from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, into “malus.” As an adjective in Latin, malus means bad or evil. As a noun, it means apple in our present-day definition of the word, coming from the common apple tree now known officially as the Malus Pumila. However, the word “malus” in Jerome’s time could refer to any flesh seed-bearing fruit, explaining why Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco features a serpent coiled around a fig tree. It was finally Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve beside an apple tree, and then Milton’s canonical work, Paradise Lost, that cemented the role of the apple for future readers of The Fall.
The sacred tree is among the oldest themes in ancient Near Eastern art. One of the earliest references to the sacred tree is in the Epic of Gilgamesh, found in the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Gilgamesh was on a search for eternal life. After a long journey, he came upon a secret plant that would grant it: “Then Utnapishtim called out to him: Gilgamesh! … May I share a special secret, one that the gods alone do know? There is a plant that hides somewhere among the rocks that thirsts and thrusts itself deep in the earth, with thistles that sting. That plant contains eternal life for you… But… a cruel snake slithered by and stole the plant from Gilgamesh who saw the snake grow young again, and off it raced with the special plant.” The symbol for this sacred tree is believed to be the date palm tree. Stone engraving during the Assyrian reign of 9th century BC depicted a tall tree with a palmette crown, interpreted to represent the frond of a date palm.
The forbidden fruit of Eden could have been the pomegranate. “God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” [Genesis 3:3] In Greek mythology, the pomegranate was known as the “fruit of the dead” as it was said to have arisen from the blood of Adonis. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone tells Demeter that for her to remain in the Underworld, Hades “secretly put in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will.” It symbolizes for the Armenians the fruit of immortality and the blood of Christ. To ancient Iranian Christianity, it was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. In the Qur’an, the pomegranate grows in the Garden of Paradise as God’s good creation.
It may be concluded that whatever name this forbidden fruit of Eden happens to be depends on the spatiotemporal specificity of its audience. Yet regardless of its identity, it is always a symbol of temptation, of knowledge, of immortality – of all that represents our earthly desire. A ripe, sweet fruit is the ultimate gift that a deified nature could grant a human being.
This dress is crafted from two square cloths of the same dimension. It is made entirely with folds and pleats, without any cutting. The front silk square depicts a scenery of fall fruits and flowers. Adorned over the neckline is a cotton-blend oblong scarf with lovely detail of golden pears and red berries. It is tied at the shoulder by a small pearl button.
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