I’m asking about how far back in time we know that any language clearly defined a word for the fruit we know as apple now.
Thousands of years. English apple is cognate with words elsewhere in Germanic, in Celtic, in Balto-Slavic, and perhaps an example from Italic; all of these words mean apple, and it is more likely that they inherited the meaning along with the word than it is that they all came up with the same fruit independently. So probably at least as long ago as the composition of the Hebrew Bible, though I don’t know anything about Hebrew fruit vocabulary, so I don’t know if the authors of Genesis knew or cared about apples.
I guess i think that is true that the primary purpose of those orchards was cider, even if people did enjoy some of the fruit fresh, in season. So that “what schools didn’t teach you” story is fundamentally true. And that’s why it’s doesn’t bother me.
The version we sang was
Oh, the Lord’s been good to me
And so I’ll thank the Lord
For giving me
The things i need
The sun and the rain and the appleseed
The Lord’s been good to me
And yes, the camp i went to was theoretically a secular camp, but the guy who ran it was a Christian and wanted to incorporate grace. So all of our graces were non-denominational.
And I’m not telling you that you should be bothered. The point of my post was to explain a position you seemed to not understand, not to say which position was more correct.
How you feel about it is obvious. You are okay with fuzzy knowledge. I was hoping to explain why an academic might be more rigorous. Why they might encounter more problems due to people’s imprecise knowledge.
And I was relating my own personal experience that I feel like I learned something new today. I now no longer think that getting decent apples from seed is basically impossible. I know that the possibility is actually pretty high.
And the reason I was mistaken before was seemingly because this one guy used hyperbole in a book without making it clear that’s what they were doing. You write an academic tome, and people will take you seriously.
So I do understand why CalMeacham finds it frustrating, even though I also understand why you might not think it’s a big deal.
Hebrew has Tapuach, which is not used in Genesis or the rest of the Torah but is used in later books. Similar words appear in Arabic and the related Tigrinya.
There are two theories for the origin of the word - it could come from a similar word in ancient Egyptian (the Egyptians grew apple trees along the Nile thousands of years ago), or it could come from a root that means something is “expanded” or “swollen”.
Thanks guys. That’s taking it pretty far back in time.
Yeah, and actually, if i had been misled by that, I’d probably be annoyed, too. Honestly, I’m inured to bits of science being wrong in serious articles.
- Holbein, Hans, the Younger. Painting. Adam and Eve. 1517. Kunstmuseum, Basel. 3 Apr. 2018 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hans_Holbein_-_Adam_and_Eve.JPG.
Holbein became Henry VIII’s portraitist. Here he imagines Eve presenting Adam with an apple complete with a hidden surprise. Adam is thinking, “Here we go again.”
Are those necessarily in conflict? Ancient Egyptian was a Semitic language, too, wasn’t it? So the Egyptian word also could have come from a “swollen” root.
Nope. YOU may have known better, but it appears that he believed it, and mislead a lot of other people (including Smithsonian magazine).
That’s not colorful hyoerbole, it’s misinformation. That’s why it bothered me.
The way I heard it, old apple orchards were indeed intended (primarily) for making Cider. It isn’t as if the apples were inedible for making pies or eating by themselves by any means, but they were varieties bred and intended to maximize the Cider yield. In other words they wanted a “watery” apple that lots of juice was easily expressed. Modern apple varieties intended for eating, long shelf life, just aren’t as efficient for making Cider, so the story goes. The resulting Cider is not as flavorful either, it the hipsters can be believed. Many legacy orchards and old world varietals are in demand for cloning or propagation.
The commercial varieties of apple we eat today have a number of characteristics they are bred for, but they do not lend themselves as better candidates for making Cider. That’s the claim anyway, I’ve no idea if it’s true or not. It sounds right if you squint.
Ancient Egyptian was part of the Afro Asiatic group, which includes Semitic alongside Berber, Chadic and other groups.
I think the main issue with flavor is that bitterness is a defect in an eating apple, but you want some bitterness in a good cider.
But also, some characteristics like “crunch” are good in an eating apple, but irrelevant in a cider apple, and slightly drier apples with more structure may keep better for fresh eating but be less desirable for cider.
Indeed, I’d say that the texture is the single most important trait in an eating apple. Well, OK, and you also want some minimal amount of sweetness, but judging from commercially-available varieties, sweetness appears to be a lot easier to get than crispness. Every single apple in the grocery store is sweet enough, but most of them aren’t crisp enough.
When I was a l little kid I remember the Boy Scouts going door to door around Christmas time selling red Apples from Washington state, probably some sort of subversive Merit Badge scheme or fundraiser or something. Thing is, they were Ginormous, the size of softballs or better, and yet absolutely crisp and sweet flavorful. They were kind of spendy, but they were oh so good.
I’m not too impressed by that article, if I’m honest. Cecil seems to have simply assembled a variety of commentary and not really bothered to present any of the argument for or against any particular view. It seems to spend the most time on the Christian writers, who are effectively the worst source since they’re far away in time and language from the original, and weren’t terribly scholastic in their approach to interpretation.
Personally, I’d probably go with one of these options:
- There isn’t meant to be a particular, common terrestrial plant. There is, after all, no such thing as a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that the average person is growing in their backyard.
- The date palm. It seems to be the most commonly seen tree in ancient imagery from that region, that has fruit. Also, if we look for fruit mentions in Uggaritic texts, olives and grapes don’t seem to be notably popular; pomegranates and figs seem to be mostly foreign. Dates have the most diverse set of terms and are distinctly native to the region.
- Stories among the tribes of Northern and Southern Israel/Judah had differing opinions on the identification of the Tree. As a political compromise, they simply left it vague in the text.
I was sorry to read the last post. I spent years growing a Tree of Knowledge of Antipathy and Ambivalence in my yard. Since it has been a strange year weather wise you might wonder how it’s doing. I don’t know and I don’t care. 
Just to add another opinion in the seed apple edibility debate- it’s going to depend hugely on the location. I’ve eaten quite a lot of ‘feral’ apples, as apples are a common part of the landscape here; some are more-or-less wild and completely inedible, some are from apple cores chucked by walkers, more likely to be tasty. Of the ones I’ve tried, I’d say over 50% I wouldn’t want a second bite, even cooked. Some are so tiny and pitted they’re barely even worth making into cider- which is what I largely collected them for.
It seems pretty likely to me that the odds of getting a ‘good’ apple is going to depend on what other apples are around; in an orchard of all high sweetness, low tannin cultivated apples, you’re less likely to get a high tannin cross. In an area with lots of wild crab apples, your odds of getting something small, high tannin and sour is going to be higher.
It’s worth noting that some commercial orchards actually use crab apples for pollination, as they produce blossom over a long period and viably pollinate everything, while commercial varieties can be unable to pollinate each other due to timing or genetic incompatibility. This can mean you can pick two apples from the same tree, and one may have one crab apple parent of the seed, while the other has two commercially produced parents. In other words, the people saying 5% of apples are good from seed and those saying it’s more like 50% might actually both be right, just living in different areas with different trees and different pollination techniques. Apple genetics are complex, but selecting the parents is still going to change the odds.
Incidentally, I got quite into some of the old English fruit varieties a while back. Some are actually almost inedible when fresh, but keep for ages and mellow with age as the bitter compounds that help them stay good break down with age. There’s one old Cornish one that’s traditionally supposed to be stored and not eaten until the new year, though I never managed to source it. Some of those varieties could also be reproduced by simply cutting a small branch off, sticking it in the ground and leaving it to it- no grafting, no messing. Doesn’t do well in dry climates though.
This is what I go with. After all, I’ve eaten apples and figs and pomegranates and olives and grapes, and none of them ever imparted any particular moral knowledge on me. And the text seems to suggest that the Tree was unique, anyway: It was “don’t eat of this tree”, not “don’t eat of any of the trees that look like this one”.