Another Christian misreading of Genesis. When Adam and Eve are expelled, they're gone for good. It's time to get on with their lives.

God has failed to convert Satan. I imagine this quote was used during Vietnam in conjunction with "hearts and minds."

Also see WP on Canaanite religion, and child sacrifice by the Carthaginians, who were transplanted Phoenicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/21/carthaginians-sacrificed-own-children-study

Instead of Homer's catalogue of ships, Milton gives us a catalogue of devils.

See WP on horned deities. I don't have the research to show how some of those deities came to be identified as devils. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_deity

An echo of 1.177: To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep

And so is Milton a discoverer of new lands.

Also, of course, the shield of Achilles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_of_Achilles

(1) Hamlet II.2.249, when discussing Denmark as a prison:

...for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

(2) From the Stoic handbook of Epictetus:

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others.

(3) The first verse of the Dhammapada, attributed to Buddha:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

Wasn't he chained on the burning lake?

This implies that getting Eve to bite the forbidden fruit was part of God's plan. Not only that, it was better than no bite, and it allowed Jesus to show mercy.

Fine words, but keep in mind that Satan is bragging- one might say strutting- to make up for his bad situation. Or as it says above:

So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain, [ 125 ] Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:

This could be Milton himself, writing PL during the Restoration.

Echoed in Tennyson's Ulysses:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,<br> Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will<br> To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Another echo of Dante (Inferno 3):

JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER; MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY, THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY. ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.

4Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; 5fecemi la divina podestate, 6la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore.

7Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create 8se non etterne, e io etterno duro. 9Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate’.

To approximate that theology, Genesis would have read:

In the beginning, before God created Heaven and Earth, created He Hell.

Of course, Milton does not say that Hell was created before creation.

A devilish echo of Ex. 3:2:

the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

Reminiscent of the chaos before creation.

From WP: in the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound (translated by G. M. Cookson), Hephaestus is to bind Prometheus "to the jagged rocks in adamantine bonds infrangible".

There's also a book on Prometheus and Lucifer, though I haven't read it. I imagine it's not the only one to have made the connection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer_and_Prometheus

Note that Satan and the serpent are not the same in Genesis. Going further, Satan has quite a small part in the Old Testament. Even in Job, it's never assumed that he has any independent power. It was left to Christian readers to put Rev 12.9 together with Genesis.

The Bible quote is true, but we never see them as generals in God's army (as it were). Genesis goes right from the creation of Eve to the apple, so we never see the humans having dominion over the rest of nature.

Providence, from providere, to foresee, assumes that God foresaw the apple bite and it was all part of his plan. At the least, this smells like a mix of Greek notions read back into Genesis, or to use the words of Jesus, to pour new wine into old skins.

Housman (Terrence, This is Stupid Stuff):

For Malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man.

Were Milton not a powerful poet, many of his positions would be considered heretical. The same could be said of Dante, despite those who see him as St. Thomas in verse.

This doesn't mesh with Genesis. Adam & Eve were free to eat of the tree of life until they ate of the tree of knowledge. Indeed, compared to earlier epics like Giglamesh which were about the pursuit of immortality, Genesis is about morality instead of mortality. From this point of view, Christianity, or even Judaism at the time of Jesus with "teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" is, to use the Christian word, backsliding. If that sounds too harsh, consider that the culture of Egypt, with its huge emphasis on life after death, was known and rejected by the authors of the Pentateuch.

Shelly refers to this and Genesis in The Cloud:

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of Heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest, As still as a brooding dove.

Perhaps the real subject of the poem: Milton's pure and upright heart.

It may be considered heterodox, but it's also the position in the Jewish Study Bible:

A tradition over two millennia old sees 1.1 as a complete sentence: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In the 11th century, the great Jewish commentator Rashi made a case that the verse functions as a temporal clause. This is, in fact, how some ancient Near Eastern creation stories begin-including the one that starts at 2-4b. Hence the translation, When God began to create heaven and earth. 2: This clause describes things just before the process of creation began. To modern people, the opposite of the created order is "nothing," that is, a vacuum. To the ancients, the opposite of the created order was something much worse than "nothing." It was an active, malevolent force we can best term "chaos." In this verse, chaos is envisioned as a dark, undifferentiated mass of water. In 1.9, God creates the dry land (and the Seas, which can exist only when water is bounded by dry land). But in 1.1-2.3, water itself and darkness, too, are primordial (contrast Isa. 45.7). In the midrash, Bar Kappara upholds the troubling notion that the Torah shows that God created the world out of preexistent material. But other rabbis worry that acknowledging this would cause people to liken God to a king who had built his palace on a garbage dump, thus arrogantly impugning His majesty (Gen. Rab. 1.5). In the ancient Near East, however, to say that a deity had subdued chaos is to give him the highest praise.

It seems that Milton the Protestant agrees with the Church fathers when it suits his purposes, and considers then ignorant when it suits his purposes.

I'm assuming this is from Rev 12:9: And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

The larger question is when is Milton quoting scripture, and when is he using poetic license? The latter point could be put less sympathetically: when is he creating his own theology?

Gen 2.8: God did make him in one place, and then moved him to Eden: And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, to the East, and He place there the human He had fashioned (Alter)

Sounds like the burning bush (Exodus 3.2): And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

One of many echos of Satan to Prometheus: Power Now drive the adamantine wedge's stubborn edge straight [65] through his chest with your full force.

Quite a rewriting of Genesis. See 1.31: Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.

This may sound blasphemous, but it's Milton's doctrine that is blasphemous-- that creation wasn't complete, wasn't good, until He created Hell.

And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line (Pope). While Pope may have been thinking of this line, it works because the line is meant to be slow for a region dolorous.

Devils govern themselves better than men.

The code of the classical hero, as Hektor replying to his wife in book 6 of the Iliad, who had advised him to stay out of the fighting:

Then tall Hektor of the shining helm answered her: “All these<br> things are in my mind also, lady; yet I would feel deep shame<br> before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing garments,<br> if like a coward I were to shrink aside from the fighting;<br> and the spirit will not let me, since I have learned to be valiant and to fight always among the foremost ranks of the Trojans,<br> winning for my own self great glory, and for my father.

In Dryden's translation:

The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.

Repetition of Book 1, line 45:

Him the Almighty Power Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie With hideous ruine and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.

Gen 3.1: Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

Even if the devils are wrong, they get many great lines. Perhaps this is Milton's feeling towards the Restoration.

The law, as with the fall of Troy, the Melian Dialog, or the destruction of Thebes by Alexander, meant enslaving the women and slaughtering the men.

(1) Another echo of Prometheus, along with adamantine in book 1, and tyranny spoken by Moloch. The bigger point is whether Satan (or other devils) are heroic rebels like Prometheus, or just devils.

(2) The authorship of Prometheus Bound is disputed, due to textual differences from Aeschylus' other works. See the WP article for a starting point.

An echo of the flood in Gen 7.11

the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Which itself is an undoing of creation (Gen 1.6)

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Perhaps an echo of Claudio in Measure for Measure (3.1.130:

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.

Immaculate

Belial may be a slimy politician, but his point his sound: the devils don't have the firepower.

Another hint of Prometheus Bound- i.e. the idea of God as a tyrant. To my mind, Milton makes Moloch sound better than Belial because of his courage, even if his advice is less sound.

What would peace be here? I'm not siding with Belial, but what better options do they have?