Wind
is, for the most part, manageable. Other food stuffs can have a somewhat more
profound effect than merely making you fart. While there are times when this
outcome is greatly desired, there are equally occasions when it is absolutely
not what the doctor ordered.
We
begin with the apple. A safe sort of food one would have thought but not when
religion has anything to do with it. The Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Jarir
al-Tabari (838-923), author of one of the earliest commentaries on the Qu’ran,
argues that it was eating the forbidden fruit that caused Adam and Eve to
defecate for the first time and that this was one of the principal reasons for
their expulsion.
However,
it should be noted that neither the Bible nor the Qu’ran actually claims the
forbidden fruit was an apple: this was a later idea stemming from the fact that
in Latin translations of Genesis the fruit was described as malus, which means ‘evil’ as an adjective
but ‘apple’ as a noun. Other contenders for the original forbidden fruit
include grapes, figs, olives, quinces and even wheat.
Eve ate first from the tree. Then
she commanded Adam to eat from it. It was a tree which made whoever ate from it
defecate. But there must be no faeces in the garden…
(Tafsir al-Tabari c.915-923)
The
danger of apples is underscored in The
Pilgrim’s Progress when Matthew falls sick and he was “much pained
in his Bowels, so that he was with it at times, pulled as ‘twere both ends
together.” When it is discovered that he has been scrumping for apples from a
tree that overhung an orchard wall, the doctor is triumphant.
I knew
he had eaten something that was not wholesome food, and that food, to wit, that
Fruit, is even the most hurtful of all. It is the Fruit of Beelzebub’s Orchard.
I do marvel that none did warn you of it; many have died thereof.
(John
Bunyan – The Pilgrim’s Progress 1678)
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