It is known that the apple, according to the biblical story, is a forbidden fruit. From here the saying went among the people that the forbidden fruit is always sweet. However, finding an answer to the question of why the apple was chosen as a symbol of prohibition is not as easy as it seems.
Taboo
The essence of the very saying about the forbidden sweet fruit is that a person always wants to try something forbidden. And the more a person is limited in his desire, the more passionate it becomes. For example, if a child is forbidden to eat sweets, then, no matter how you hide them, the baby will certainly find and eat them. The same thing happens with adults. The more a person is protected from what he wants to use, the more he will achieve his goal.
The apple is one of the hardest symbols in religion. There is a version that it was not the fruit of the tree that Eve tasted, but the flesh of that very Serpent-tempter at the instigation of Satan. And anger was born in Eve. In this case, not an apple is forbidden, but the flesh of an animal.
Legends
The origins of the sayings are rooted in antiquity, to the period of the appearance of the first people on earth. According to the legends of the Old Testament, God created the first people and settled them in his Garden of Eden. God allowed Adam and Eve to eat all the fruits from the trees in the garden, except for one, the apple tree. The apple tree was considered a tree of Good and Evil and was prohibited.
However, the Serpent-tempter persuaded Eve to taste the fruit from the apple tree, arguing that the apple would give her divine knowledge. In fact, after eating the forbidden fruit from the apple tree, Adam and Eve fell into sin, breaking the covenants of God. After that, they were expelled from Paradise and became ordinary sinful people, doomed to torment and suffering.
Apple of discord
In all world religions, the symbol of the forbidden fruit is found. Why did it become an apple? Scholars and philologists believe that the ancient scriptures did not indicate a specific fruit. They are sure that the apple was given the status of a taboo due to the similarity in the spelling of two Latin words. So, apple in Latin is spelled mālum, and evil - malum. It turns out that the discrepancy is observed in only one letter, or rather the apostrophe above the letter a. And so the symbolism of the forbidden fruit stuck to the apple.
The apple has not always been a symbol of the forbidden fruit; in early Greek myths, there is a mention of the pomegranate as a fruit that holds thousands of temptations.
Some historians do not exclude that the ancient Greeks gave the status of the forbidden fruit to the apple in their myths. So, according to one of them, the goddess of discord Eris, who was not invited to the wedding ceremony, stealthily threw a golden apple marked "the most beautiful" at the celebration. This led to a quarrel between the ancient Greek celestials Hero, Athena and Aphrodite, who believed that this apple was intended only for her.
