this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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"apple" used to be a generic term for fruit. So it's actually "fruit of the earth", the French are poetic like that
Oh, that explains the myth that Adam and Eve at an apple, when a specific fruit is never mentioned.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/apple
That's a bingo.
It also explain why we here in the Nordics call oranges "appelsin", as in a "Chinese apple".
Same in Dutch: sinaasappel
Great! Can't have myths about random fruit in this otherwise totally valid, reasonable and trustworthy story about a woman that was made from a man's rib and talked to reptiles.
If a narrative is not literally true, does that mean it has no truth value?
What is "truth value" supposed to mean?
Sorry, I wasn't explaining myself well.
Just because a story isn't factually true, doesn't mean that it has no value, or negative value. There are other types of values which can supersede factual value:
Truth isn't always about facts. Sometimes factual statements can be used as a weapon of deceit.
There are other types of value, of course. It's just funny to specifically call the apple out for being a myth. The entire story is a myth, so they could have made it a pomelo for all I care.
But… we’re talking French and Adam and Eve was written in Hebrew. Is it the same for Hebrew?
Hebrew used a generic word for fruit, all languages translated that word as their version of apple which was generic at the time, and then much later, all languages changed the meaning of their word for apple, it's not specific to French. The use of apple for one specific fruit is fairly recent - more recent than the King James Bible, even.
I don't know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.
Literally yes, ground apple is potato in hebrew