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
Theodicy and the Bible by coercion as with literal slaves. The Fall (sometimes lowercase) in its theological use refers to "the lapse of human beings into a state of natural or innate sinfulness through the sin of Adam and Eve." The story of the Fall is narrated in Genesis 3:1–7. "Nelson's Student Bible Dictionary" describes "the fall" as "the disobedience and sin of Adam and Eve that caused them to lose the state of innocence in which they had been created. This event plunged them and all mankind into a state of sin and corruption." "A Concise Dictionary of Theology" provides a similar description