Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple by Azzan Yadin-Israel (review)

Reviewed by: Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple by Azzan Yadin-Israel Zev Garber azzan yadin-israel, Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022). Pp. xii + 181. 27. 50. The intent of Azzan Yadin-Israel in compiling this resource to the story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2–3) is twofold: (1) to provide scholars and non-specialists End Page 386 with knowledge of late antiquity, Greco-Roman cultural background, and early medieval Jewish and Christian sources, so that they can engage beneficially in reading and understanding Genesis 2–3; and (2) to furnish credible guidelines in telling the story of how and why the unnamed forbidden fruit became the apple. To reach his objective, Y. -I. utilizes primary and secondary sources to craft a narrative and commentary of eighty-three pages that are infused with cultural, historical, linguistic, and social data and tidbits. His study is supported by over ninety pages of voluminous notes, bibliography, and an index, which enable the reader to read more effectively the thoughts and theories on the forbidden fruit across the centuries. Theology is central to Jewish and Christian understandings of Gen 2: 17. Rabbinic Judaism teaches that the episode of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is Adam/human's ethical challenge to this worldly existence. That is to say, it is the will of humans to obey God and thus to submit their physical and spiritual desires to the call, will, and teaching of God as revealed in the sacred Torah, which is the eternal guide for what constitutes and distinguishes good and evil, and which human reason cannot discern in desperate moments of life and death. Humans' inevitable mortality in Judaism is therefore mandated by doing and understanding the moral code of the 613 Commandments (Exod 24: 7), as symbolized by the fringed garment, worn daily, that reminds the Israelite/Jew to see, remember, and do the commandments of the Lord (Num 15: 39). Christian understanding of Gen 2: 17 agrees with Jewish understanding, though it focuses on the idea of "original sin" as linked to eating from the tree of knowledge, and the need for Jesus's death and resurrection to overcome this sin. Both traditions refer to, but do not emphasize, the identity and importance of the forbidden fruit, which may well explain Y. -I. 's temptation to transform. In the introduction, Y. -I. describes his research direction in the quest of how and why the apple triumphed as the forbidden fruit. In chap. 1, he cites scriptural and early Christian and Jewish sources that speak of traditions related to grapes, figs, wheat, citron, pomegranate, and banana as the prohibited fruit, but rarely the apple. The most significant tradition that equates the fruit with the fig, according to Y. -I. , is found in The Life of Adam and Eve (p. 8) (composed between the third and seventh centuries c. e. but drawn from earlier sources), which narrates that Adam and Eve's clothes are sewn from the fig leaves of the same plant from which they ate the forbidden fruit (Gen 3: 7). As another example, the tradition of the fruit as wheat derives from folk tradition, word etymology, and rabbinic reasoning. Specifically, there is a phonetic similarity between the Hebrew term for sin (ḥeṭ) and wheat (ḥiṭa), and the rabbinic teaching of "measure for measure" conveys that punishment for the transgression included bread, "by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" (Gen 3: 19). More illustrative is the grape tradition. The disruptive actions of Israelites are likened to (derived from) the corrupt vine-stock and vineyards of Sodom and Gomorrah (Deut 32: 32–33). Additionally, a midrashic tradition attributed to Rabbi Nehemiah derives the wickedness of nations from the vine and planting of Sodom and Gomorrah and back to the serpent that causes Adam and Eve to go astray (Sifre Deuteronomy §323; third century). In chap. 2, Y. -I. investigates sources from antiquity and early Christianity regarding how the apple became the forbidden fruit. Specifically, it derives from Latin. . .