Paradise Lost temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men". In his introduction to the Penguin edition of "Paradise Lost", the Milton scholar John Leonard notes, "John Milton was nearly sixty when he published Paradise Lost in 1667. The biographer John Aubrey (1626–97) tells us that the poem was begun in about 1658 and finished in about 1663. However, parts were almost certainly written earlier, and its roots lie in Milton's earliest youth." Leonard speculates that the
Life of Adam and Eve are: the "Greek Apocalypse of Moses", the "Latin Life of Adam and Eve", the "Slavonic Life of Adam and Eve", the "Armenian Penitence of Adam", the "Georgian Book of Adam", and one or two fragmentary Coptic versions. These texts are usually named as Primary Adam Literature to distinguish them from subsequent related texts, such as the Cave of Treasures that includes what appears to be extracts. They differ greatly in length and wording, but for the most part appear to be derived from a single source that has not survived, and contain (except for some obvious insertions) no undeniably Christian