Culture
The Passion fruit is so called because it is one of the many species of Passion Flower. ("Passion Flower" being the literal English translation of the Latin genus name, Passiflora). The name was given by missionaries because the parts of the flower seemed reminiscent of the torture (the Passion) of Christ prior to his crucifixion:
- The three stigmas reflect the three nails in Jesus's hands and feet.
- The threads of the passion flower resemble the Crown of Thorns.
- The vine's tendrils are likened to the whips.
- The five anthers represented the five wounds.
- The ten petals and sepals regarded to resemble the Apostles (excluding Judas and Peter).
- The purple petals representing the purple robe used to mock Jesus' claim to kingship (Mt. 27:28)
The flower of the passion fruit is the national flower of Paraguay.
Read more about this topic: Passiflora Edulis
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“All our civilization had meant nothing. The same culture that had nurtured the kindly enlightened people among whom I had been brought up, carried around with it war. Why should I not have known this? I did know it, but I did not believe it. I believed it as we believe we are going to die. Something that is to happen in some remote time.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)