Quick question: without opening your Bible or Koran, answer this: what kind of apple was it that Eve gave to Adam in the Garden of Eden?  Was it a Honeycrisp?   A Fuji?   A Granny Smith?   Trick question: we don’t know what kind of apple appeared in the story because we don’t even know what the fruit in the story was supposed to be.  We’ve long heard the story of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and if you’re a Westerner, chances are what springs to mind is Eve giving Adam an apple.   But there’s no version of the Bible or the Koran—both of which contain this story—that names the fruit.  So why do we make this association? Both Genesis 2:17 and Koran 2:35 refer to the Tree of Knowledge, but in neither version is the kind of tree even hinted at by the author.  It could well have been an apple, but it could just as easily have been something else.   Apple cultivation predates the writing of Genesis, which was wri...