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
Fall of man postlapsarian, after the Fall). The story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man represents a tradition among the Abrahamic peoples, with a presentation more or less symbolical of certain moral and religious truths. The doctrine of the fall of man is extrapolated from Christian exegesis of . According to the narrative, God creates Adam and Eve, the first man and woman. God places them in the Garden of Eden and forbids them to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent tempts Eve to eat fruit from the forbidden tree, which she