Symbolism

Below you will find information on what the apple represents!

Apples appear in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. One of the problems identifying apples in religion, mythology and folktales is that the word "apple" was used as a generic term for all (foreign) fruit, other than berries but including nuts, as late as the 17th century. This term may even have extended to plant galls, as they were thought to be of plant origin (see oak apple). For instance, when tomatoes were introduced into Europe they were called "love apples". In one Old English work cucumbers are called //eorþæppla// (lit. "earth-apples'), just like in some languages (such as French and Dutch) potatoes are still called "earth-apples". In some languages oranges are called "golden apples" or "Chinese apples". Datura is still called 'thorn-apple". **Two Young Men** In this painting modern interpreters have viewed the apple alternately as an ironic twist on Christian symbology intended by the painter as a sexual innuendo between two men, or as a //memento mort//. Crispin van den Broeck (Dutch), ca. 1590; Oil on panel; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Ethnobotanical and ethnomycological scholars such as R. Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck and Clark Heinrich write that the mythological apple is a symbolic substitution for the entheogenic Amanita muscaria (or fly agaric) mushroom, and its association with knowledge an allusion to the revelatory states described by some shamans and users of psychedelic mushrooms. At times artists would co-opt the apple, as well as other religious symbology, whether for ironic effect or as a stock element of symbolic vocabulary. Thus, secular art as well made use of the apple as symbol of love and sexuality. It is often an attribute associated with Venus who is shown holding it.

The information provided here is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_(symbolism).