Rather than a broad, general term for “fruit,” it took on a narrower meaning: “apple.” Once that change in meaning became widely accepted, readers of the Old French version of Genesis understood the statement “Adam and Eve ate a pom” to mean “Adam and Eve ate an apple.” At that point, they understood the apple to be the fruit that the Bible itself identified as the forbidden fruit and began representing it in these terms. Wheat, grapes, citrons, figs, pomegranates, and olives have all been presented as the fruit that Adam and Eve ate, yet the apple, which only entered the scene in the 12 th century C.E. Death, suffering, poisonous plants, venomous animals, and all kinds of physical and spiritual hardship. “Adam and Eve ate a pom,” meant “Adam and Eve ate a fruit.” Over time, however, the meaning of pom changed. Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit. The Story of grapefruit (citrus paradisi) : formerly known as the Forbidden Fruit or the Fruit of the Garden of Eden with special reference to its. Latin authors most commonly refer to the forbidden fruit as a pomum, a Latin word meaning “fruit” or “tree fruit.” Not surprisingly, Old French, which descends from Latin, has the word “pom” (modern French “pomme”), which originally meant “fruit” as well, and was used in the earliest Old French translations of Genesis. The answer comes from an unexpected place-historical linguistics. The answer was France in the 12th century, and from there to other countries. To answer this question, I examined the artistic representation of the fall of man scene, trying to determine where and when artists begin to portray the forbidden fruit as an apple.

New eden forbidden fruit