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 traditions. Interesting parallels can be found with some New Testament passages, such as the mention of the Tree of Life in . The more striking resemblances are with ideas in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: Eve as the source of sin (), Satan disguising himself as an angel of light (), the location of the paradise in the third heaven (). In addition, there are parallels between Christ's forty days in the desert and Adam and Eve's forty days in the rivers. No direct relationship can be determined between the New Testament and the "Life of Adam and Eve",