DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
Genesis 3 calls it only "the fruit of the tree" — no apple, anywhere. The apple crept in later, helped by a Latin pun: malum meaning "apple" and malum meaning "evil" differ only in a vowel length that ordinary spelling doesn't mark, so on the page they look identical.
Why it’s interesting
Artists and commentators, not the text, made it an apple — the identification is well established in medieval Western art and writing centuries before Milton, who inherited the image rather than invented it. The Hebrew just says "fruit," leaving the species to the imagination.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.