To best understand where evil originated, you have to look at how the world was created. God, who is not evil, first created the planet Earth as a perfect entity. At day four of creation, after vegetation sprouted, “…God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). The word GOOD itself is translated as something being excellent or morally sound. The original word used was “tov” in Hebrew, with a slightly different translation into English as being functioning. Thus, God created what was sufficient for the basis of life as He envisioned. By the time Earth was at rest in care of Adam, God declared everything as being “very good”. Then he rested.
While it is true that God created the tree of “Good and Evil” (Hebrew “ra”), that term for evil was considered the absence of perfection, as a sort of correction, not sin. Therefore, evil as we know it was NOT created but God, but what He did establish with that tree was for making wise decisions and following selfish ambitions. One might say God created Satan, who was sinful and evil…yes, God created Satan and all the other angels, but He also let them decide for themselves if God was worthy to be worshipped. Satan, who stubbornly set out to prove God wrong, was sent to Earth to try his best to do so. (see also Job 1:6-7, which describes the interaction between God and Satan as they watch over what mankind does and thinks)
Now honestly, I don’t believe any fruit itself would have been filled with goodness OR evil, simply for the fact that nothing God made was contaminated in any way. To go against this would have negated the holiness of the Garden of Eden. What the fruit represented were boundaries and choices, and because Satan was there too, he made the fruit seem physically pleasing and put that question of God’s intent in their minds. So-saying, they just had to try to think for themselves whether or not God knew what was best for them. That mistake proved to be a correction of the biggest kind. However, because God gave both Adam and Eve the freedom to choose, He knew that He couldn’t keep them from the tree, only advise them on what choice would be best. That’s when sin crept in, and with it, the introduction of evil as we know it today, as being bad, morally corrupt, and filled with anger. Those terms would not have been used to describe evil before that point, because there simply had been no need. In short, it was partly man and partly Satan who created what we know as “evil”.
Resources:
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/27_good.html
http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/faq/create_evil.html
