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 30–49, 51 is in common with that of the "Apocalypse of Moses", though with great differences in details. Chapters 15–30 ("Eve's Tale") of the "Apocalypse of Moses" have no parallel in the "Latin Life of Adam and Eve". The penance of Adam and Eve in the water can be found also in the later Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan. The Slavonic Adam book was published by Jagic along with a Latin translation in 1893. This version agrees for the most part with the Greek Apocalypse of Moses. It has, moreover, a section, §§ 28–39, which, though not found