Temptation transformed: the story of how the forbidden fruit became an apple

Abstract

"How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall of Man? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple. Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once commonly depicted as a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though theologians are often blamed for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that subtle changes in these languages altered popular understandings of the Fall until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon."-- On front flap of dust jacket.

Contents

Introduction: The curious case of the apple -- The missing apple -- A bad Latin apple -- The iconographic apple -- The vernacular apple -- Conclusion: A scholarly reflection.