The Apple and the Whale

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we will be talking about the journey that two biblical objects took through church history, the apple and the whale. If you go back to Genesis chapter 2, you are introduced to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and in Genesis chapter 3, we are introduced to the notion of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, what was that fruit? Today, it’s most commonly considered an apple. That protrusion in the front of the neck is a piece of cartilage that protects the larynx. We call it Adam’s apple, don’t we? Doctors call it the laryngeal prominence, but alas, it’s part of that apple stuck in our throat from Adam. We see apples all over in literature as the fruit, the identity of the fruit, the forbidden fruit that Eve and Adam partook.

Well, if we go back to the original words, whether it’s the Hebrew, the Greek, or the Latin, what we find is that term is simply the generic term for fruit. The ancient commentators would speak of it as an orchard fruit. Contenders in the early church were the grape, the fig, and the pomegranate. The fig, of course, because Adam and Eve make for themselves clothes of fig leaves. So, if there are fig leaves, perhaps it was a fig tree, and it’s figs that are most commonly depicted in early Christian art. In the frescoes, in the Roman catacombs depicting the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, there are palm trees and fig trees, and so the culprit is usually the fig. But something happened in the Middle Ages, in the 1200s, specifically, and in France, in stained glass and churches and in illuminated manuscripts, all of a sudden, the fruit that started to appear is roundish and reddish and it became an apple.

We see this especially in the Dutch and German painters in the 15th century, 16th century. Lucas Cranach illustrating all those Luther Bibles coming out of Germany, it’s an apple. A holdout seems to be Michelangelo in his Sistine Chapel. If you look up, up, up and look close enough, you will see that Eve is not holding an apple indeed, she’s holding a fig. But he’s the exception that proves the rule. Alas, the apple is the commonly understood fruit. It’s even the lyric of a popular song. How does it go? They say, “Eve tempted Adam with an apple.” Well, we don’t know exactly what that fruit was. Its identity is not given to us beyond the text, but it is an interesting journey to see that that fruit takes through church history.

And while we are on the subject of journeys, let’s go to Jonah. Jonah 1 speaks in the Hebrew of a great fish, but all of a sudden that great fish becomes a whale. We go back to Moby Dick and, of course, this is the whaling ships of New England and Father Mapple’s sermon. Well, of course, Jonah is going to be swallowed by a whale, but there are others who think differently. The famous oceanographer, co-inventor of scuba, Jacques Cousteau, argued that the great fish was a grouper of all things. So, where did the whale come from? Well, it seems like William Tyndale is the origin of that story. As he translated Matthew chapter 12 verse 40, and it’s reference back to the Tale of Jonah, he speaks of the whale’s belly, and so it is in the King James, the whale’s belly. Others have the belly of the great fish. One text has the sea monster. Who knows? What we do know is, two people know the identity of that great fish. God is one, for sure, Jonah is another, and I suppose there is a third, whatever the great fish was, but it’s probably not talking.

Well, that's the apple and the whale. And I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.