I think I should have used this image in my logo, don't you?I mean, the one I picked is beautiful and lush but if you look closer at my logo, you'll see it's not even an apple she's eating. It's a pomegranate (which is even cooler, really, but doesn't match my title).
I love how the apple can symbolize life, knowledge and temptation.
But I was actually thinking, when I started this blog and named it, of chronicling my journey to becoming a teacher. So I liked the double meaning of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and a sweet gift for a teacher the first day of class.
Why do we give apples to teachers (or imagine ourselves giving apples to teachers)? How did apples come to be associated with teachers?
8 comments:
Hi K, I think it all stems from the very first day of human being on earth: Adam & Eve. R.
And who can forget the evil stepmother in Snow White with her poison apples? Mmmmm, so much of apple lore points back to the fall of Adam and Eve with the apple that "poisoned" all of creation....although it was really Eve's choice that poisoned creation not the apple itself. But then again, ever since then we've also tended to blame other people and things for our own shortcomings.
Teacher = knowledge? But then it seems more like the teacher should be offering the apple, haha, I dunno. But the pomegranate's identification with Persephone is something to contemplate now at the return of spring. I always suspected that the biblical fall combined with Christ's resurrection/ascension and the myth of Persephone were at root the same story anyway. Persephone's return in the spring is similar symbolically to Christ's rebirth and Easter, and her eating the pomegranate seeds has a parallel meaning to Adam and Eve's fall. Following from that one could then see a identification between Christ/serpent and Hades. The gnostic Sophia, sometimes referred to as the bride of Christ, was also associated with the tree of knowledge. Round and round it goes... I'd like to know what Joseph Campbell had to say about it all.
'an' identification --please don't rap my fingers. I should have brought an apple.
Or maybe it's just that apple pie is my favorite food in the whole wide world.
Headwrapper: I'd like to know what Campbell says too. You know it will be convoluted and wonderful and tie all humanity together in a great mythological web. I love that guy!
Mmmmmm. Apple pie with cheddar cheese.
Mmm, yes, delish!
"The apple of my eye."
I searched online for the origin of this saying and the Wikipedia is *gasp* wrong! It cites its origin as Middle English when I believe it comes from the Arabic, to the bible, then through translations into English.
I remember encountering that saying in my Literature of North Africa and the Middle East class.
But I can't find any proof anywhere that the Arabic predates the English. Still, I bet it does.
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