Davar Akher

Yesterday was Tu BiShvat (ט”ו בשבט), the Jewish New Year for trees. In honour of the day, I spoke briefly about the literal and figurative uses of trees in the Bible at a small conference of Melton educators. That is, I planned on speaking about the literal and figurative uses of trees in the Bible but, in preparing for my talk, I kept finding myself returning to one particular tree that features figuratively in the Bible and literally in later tradition: the עץ הדעת טוב ורע. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Despite the fact that it would seem that the fruit of this tree actually is the knowledge of good and evil, several generations of exegetes have been concerned with identifying this tree amongst the many species of trees that exist on our planet. The most pervasive identification is with the apple tree, and it has been famously suggested that the Vulgate’s rendering of the Hebrew (paraphrased: ligno scientiae boni et mali) loaned itself to this interpretation. The final word in the clause, mali, can either be a genitive of the Latin malus (“of evil”) or of the Latin malum (from Greek μηλον: “of apple”). “The tree of the knowledge of good and apple” is a ridiculous proposition, but the phonological equivalence may have facilitated the association.

Be that as it may, the word “apple” (even up until the 17th century) was also used as a reference to fruit in general. Such was also the case in French and German – as may be indicated by their respective words for “potato”: erdapfel and pomme de terre; apples of the ground. This is also a modern Hebrew rendering for the word potato: a תפוח אדמה. In Hebrew, the word for orange is a תפוח זהב (abbreviated תפוז), and literally means a “golden apple”. The name also appears in the Bible, although it is doubtful exactly what it is to which it refers. Doubtful too is the word תפוח, here translated as “apple”, although there is no classical Jewish identification between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and this arboreal species – whatever it may be.

On the contrary, suggestions in the Jewish literature include the citrus tree, the fig tree, the grape vine, and – curiously – wheat. All four of these identifications are found in the midrash (GenR 15:7), and the last three are also found in the Talmud (bBer 40a). The reason given for the identification with the citrus tree (the etrog) is that Eve, after eating of the fruit, says that the tree is good. This would seem to imply, to the authors of the midrash, that it was of the tree that she ate, as well as of the fruit. As the citrus is the only tree of which they knew that may be consumed along with its produce, the citrus is suggested as being the tree in Eden whose fruit conferred both understanding and concomitant suffering.

What are the reasons given for the other three? Wheat, which is mentioned in this context in the Talmud as part of a debate on whether its blessing should be the same as the blessing made on fruit, is identified with the tree in the garden of Eden because of its ability to confer knowledge. According to the Talmud, one says of a stupid person that he has never eaten a piece of bread in his life, and the midrash goes so far as to suggest that a child is incapable of calling their parents until such time as they have tasted grain.

Grapes are mentioned in both the Talmud and the midrash in the context of their conferral of suffering. The Talmud quotes Genesis 9, which tells of Noah’s inebriation, and the midrash quotes Deuteronomy 32:32, which likens suffering to “clusters” (אשכלות). Just as grapes grow in clusters on a vine, so too do sorrows come in clusters as well. This identification is particularly interesting, given a passage in 1 Enoch 32, which speaks of the author’s subterranean journey to the garden of Eden. Much like Dante, Enoch is accompanied by the angel Raphael, who explains to him those things that he sees around him. Upon encountering a particularly beautiful tree, its bark like the bark of the carob and its fruit growing in clusters, he is informed by Raphael that this delightful piece of foliage, whose scent permeates the garden, was the very tree of which his ancestors ate prior to their expulsion, and whose fruit confers knowledge. The author of Enoch seems unconcerned with identifying this tree with a particular species, although nonetheless takes the references to it as being literal, rather than figurative.

The final identification in the Rabbinic literature, and the one that I find most interesting, is with the fig tree. Both the Talmud and the midrash utilise the fact that it is with leaves of the fig tree that Adam and Eve both cover their nakedness. The Talmud suggests that it is with the very thing by which they were destroyed that they were also healed (בדבר שנתקלקלו בו נתקנו), but the midrash offers a curious parable.

It is like the son of a prince, the midrash says, who consorts with one of the handmaidens of the palace. His father evicts him but, coming around the side and through a window, he again steals into the handmaidens’ chamber. None of the handmaidens agree to admit him, but the handmaiden with whom he had previously consorted allows him into her private chamber. So too, Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Although Genesis records the fashioning of fig leaves before Adam’s expulsion from the garden of Eden, the midrash assumes the opposite order and indicates the fact that it is the fig tree that “readmits” Adam, and allows him to (again) take of its bounty. I do not know whether the Rabbis felt that eating figs made them any smarter (or any more miserable, for that matter), but the fig tree is a majestic tree and that may make all the difference.