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Of Apples and Oranges by Pepper Was the sacred fruit in the
Garden of Eden an apple or an orange? While according to historical and
geographic evidence, it was most likely a banana or pomegranate, from the point
of view taken by biblical literalists the question is still up in the air. The
bible typically leaves the species of fruit out, though popular design has
designated the sacred vegetation to be an apple. But could the popular mind be
wrong? In favor of the orange as God?s citrus confection, the fruit held the
wisdom of good and evil, something even Adam and Eve did not know of. ?You are
free to eat from any tree in the garden; buy you must not east from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.?
Declared God. However, as the story continues, it is shown that this ?death?
could be not a physical one but merely a death of innocence. Is the great El
telling us that if we eat of oranges we shall no longer be innocent? It may be
so! The abuse of oranges is as old as mankind itself. The serpent used the holy
goodness of the oranges for its own purposes in the corruption of humans and the
introduction of sin. It was not the Orange itself that brought sin into the
world but the fact that Adam and Eve disobeyed God. If this isn?t enough to back
up, citrus fruits could grow in the Fertile Crescent where the Garden of Eden is
suspected to have resided, according to biblio-archeologists and biblio-historians.
While the arid conditions of modern Iraq could probably not sustain orange
trees, an area of many rivers as the land of Eden was described to be surrounded
by, could very well support a citrus population. Perhaps we will never know what
type of fruit was the chosen carrier of God?s wisdom. But perhaps those who
protect the oranges can rebel against pop culture icons and envision a world
where cruelty to oranges is the ultimate loss of innocence and this noble fruit
holds all the knowledge of good and evil.
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