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Influence of Bible on Literature: Analysing Milton’s Paradise Lost

John Milton is a very important English poet, author of monumental Paradise Lost,

which is one of the great literary masterpieces. The Holy Book is an important source for

Paradise Lost and John Milton uses lots of allusions in his text

In this paper, I will write about Paradise Lost which is considered as Biblical story and its

connection with The Bible.

The Bible has given ideas to authors, many writers and poets have been using the Holy

Book as a source for their works for ages that is why The Bible takes important place in

English Literature.

John Milton is an important poet in 17th century and his best known work is Paradise

Lost. This poem is an important example for influence of The Bible in English Literature. This

text is considered as a biblical story and also known as new writing of Adam’s Fall. Milton

uses the Holy Book as a source for his text and in Paradise Lost there are a lot of allusions

from The Bible.

There are important a part in Paradise Lost, John Milton as a blind man, re-writes the

biblical story of Adam’s fall and disobedience of man. Mostly we have to analyze King

James Bible for the text because this version of The Bible is considered as a source for Milton.

In this dissertation, firstly I will give information about Milton. This chapter will

include his early life and education which is important for rest of his life. There will be also

his personal life, his poetry and his political views.

Secondly, there will be influence of The Bible on literature. Literature, especially early

times, cannot be separated with The Bible. I will mostly analyze 17th century because of the
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period that the Paradise Lost but before and after the text The Bible is an important thing in

social life. This chapter will be included Milton and The Bible and will be analyzed

relationship between the text and the author.

In the final chapter, I will analyze biblical allusions in Paradise Lost. As we already

known that Paradise Lost is one of the Biblical stories in 17th century. I will analyze how John

Milton uses The Bible in Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost is product of a man’s extraordinary

Protestant imagination that is why I will also analyze philosophical ideas in the text.

Lastly, I will put ideas about conceptual outline of Paradise Lost. In this part there

will be Milton’s ideas, theological, philosophical questions in Paradise Lost via this part we

will see how Milton uses those ideas in English Literature.

John Milton, poet, pamphleteer and historian. He is the best known with Paradise

Lost. Paradise Lost is considered as the greatest epic poem in English Literature.

Milton was born in 1608 and he died in 1674. He was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly

man of letters and a public servant for the commonwealth of England under Cromwell. He

wrote at a time of religious change and political revolution.

Milton’s poetry and prose are affected by his personal conviction, a passion for freedom and

self-determination, and also the current issues, political conflict of his day. When he was a

child he attended St. Paul’s School and in his lifetime he studied Latin, Greek, Italian,

Hebrew, French and Spanish and writing in English, Latin, Italian it was made him achieved

international prestige in his lifetime. After graduation from Cambridge he spent six years

studying independently. At that time he wrote “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”, “On

Shakespeare”, “L’Allegro”, “Il Penserosi” and “Lycidas”

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In 1638 he went to Europe and met Galileo, who was under house arrest, after that he returned

to England earlier than expected because of the civil war. John Milton was a Puritan and he

believed in the authority of The Bible and he against the Church of England and the

monarchy. That is why he wrote pamphlets on radical topics and supported Oliver Cromwell

in the English Civil War.

Milton attempt to integrate Christian theology with classical modes, just like many

Renaissance artists before. In Milton’s poems, he writes about a conflict between vice and

virtue. In his later poems Milton’s theological concerns become more certain. In 1648 by

writing a hymn, how lovely are thy dwellings fair, he explained his view on God.

When Paradise Lost was published, Milton became more important author of his period and

he was immediately recognized. He cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th

and 19th century too. He was always thought equal or superior to all other English poets,

including Shakespeare.

The Bible is the important source for English Literature, throughout the early period;

the Holy Book was used for a fruitful source by authors. Paraphrasing The Bible allowed

writers to extemporize upon scripture, merging scriptural narratives with their own.

Over the last twenty years, scholarship has found out the huge contribution that women made

to biblical paraphrase, which could be dull and uncompromising in its political stance.

Women’s engagement in religious writing has been subject of intense focus, challenging

orthodoxies that once given such writing as a “safe” and marginal activity. Perhaps most

markedly Mary Sidney, Amelia Lanyer, and Anne Southwell all supplied to a culture of

women’s writing that was the genesis of women’s writerly engagement with scripture. This

engagement continued throughout the seventeenth century.

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Henry VIII could have banned women from reading the Holy Book, but by the late

sixteenth century, The Bible reading became central to women’s life. Women could read and

paraphrase the text and this reading of The Bible conducted some women to write their own

biblically informed literature. Despite the levels of reading literacy in the early modern

period, biblical literacy was high.

Early modern translators of the Protestant The Bible adapted word for; instead of trying to

translate the thoughts or idioms of the content. The encounter history of the King James Bible

showed that the language could be seem strange to readers of the seventeenth century, but

even though this strangeness shaped the literature over the next three centuries.

Milton engaged with the question of what it is to be human and this questioning

always related to biblical ground. John Milton observed The Bible as a utopian text, the

essential guarantor of and model for human liberty. In De Doctrine Christiana, written in the

late 1650’s and early 1660’s, it shares critical principles essential to English Puritanism; the

divine inspiration of The Bible; its exclusive sufficiency as an arbiter of faith; its complete

certainty even to illiterate in all matters connected to salvation; the single, literal sense of

every biblical texts.

In England, as elsewhere, Puritan radical potential was largely suppressed by the

interpretative authority over the biblical text declared and exercised by ministers. But, that

radical potential emerged in the extreme faith Christopher Hill has studied, Familyists,

Muggletanians, Fifth Monarchists, Seekers, and others, whose claimed to personal revelation

were often described by enthusiasm, antinomian practices, millenarian fervor, and civil

anarchy. Milton did not take any of these directions. Instead of it he combined a view of The

Bible as a thoroughly radical document to be understood by each individual.

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The holy book gives ideas to Milton and it frees Milton to make his texts dramatic. The

radically metaphoric characters of biblical texts also help him more liberate to use literary

adaptation.

Paradise is one of the important Biblical stories and great masterpieces of the 17th

century. This poem tries to ground how Milton has used the Biblical allusions as influential

theme. This poem shows us a new reading of the Biblical Adam and Eve.

John Milton is well known with Paradise Lost. He composed the ten books of Paradise Lost

between 1658 and 1663. Firstly he arranged the work in 1640 and he expected to write a

tragedy titled Adam Unparadised, after that in 1667 he published Paradise Lost. The text is

considered as epic poem and also biblical story of Adam and Eve, especially Fall of Man. The

poem deals with Christian view of Adam and allurement of Satan to Adam and Eve, after that

their eventual expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost offers a new reading of the

biblical Adam and Eve.

Milton uses The Bible as a great source for his text. There are lots of allusions from Genesis

for story of the Fall and Creation but also the early history of the race and Israel. The allusions

are taken from Isaiah mostly about a good time. The allusions are made to the world-wide

development of the blessing given to Abraham. Ezekiel is also an important source for

Milton. He uses the text for the wheels and eyes instinct with spirit, when he describes the war

in Heaven he uses a lot of allusions from Ezekiel.

There are a lot of allusions from the Holy Book in Paradise Lost. For example, “Leviathan,

which God of all his works.” (1:201) the Leviathan is an allusion which is taken from the

Isiah, King James Version of The Bible. “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and

strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent;

and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Sathyaveti, and Ramamurthy. 2018 )
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Another example is about Moses and Pharaoh. In The Bible there is a part about

Pharaoh of Egypt and disobedience of him. We can see that part in Exodus; 10:13.

Milton takes part with those words, “As when the potent rod of Abrams son in Egypt evill day,

Wav’d round the coasti up call’d a pitchy cloud, Of locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind.”

There is an important Biblical story about David’s rise to power as king of Israel.

Young David fights against Saul who is Israel’s first king and Jaob also fights beside David.

While David protecting the throne, Jaob is made a commander and eventually David becomes

a king. But David lies on his deathbed and he advises his son Solomon not let to Joab “gray

head go down to the grave in peace”.

Once Joab fights against Rabbah of the Children of The Ammon and he takes the royal city,

then Joab sends a message to David about his victory and says “I have fought against Rabbah,

and taken the city of waters.” (2 Samuel; 12:26-27).

In Paradise Lost, John Milton uses this story by saying “Worship in RABBA and her warty

Plain, In ARGOB and in BASAN, to the stream, of utmost ARNON. Not content with such

Audacious neighbourhood, the quest heart of SOLOMON he led by fraud to build, His

Temple right against the Temple of God” (Book I; 295-400)

An important source is The Bible but from The Bible John Milton mostly used Genesis

for his Paradise Lost. That is why our first consideration should be Genesis.

For centuries Story of Babel Tower, a biblical story, has been inspiring a lot people and one of

them is John Milton. Milton takes this story for Paradise Lost from The Bible. The Bible says,

“And they said, go to, let us build us a city and a tower” (Genesis; 11:4). The Tower is named

Babel and Milton mentioned about it in the part which is 1; 694.

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The Bible mentions about the ancient World in Genesis and there is a passage, “There

were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto

the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, and same became mighty men which

were of old men of renown.” Milton takes this part and adapts for his poem. We know that

there were giants so Milton says, “First from the ancient World those giants came.” Those

giants and ancient World allusions from biblical story.

Another example from The Bible is Gate of Heaven. The Bible gives clue about Gate

of Heaven and Milton says “And waking cri’d. This is the Gate of Heav’n” (Book III; 516).

This allusion from Genesis, chapter 28 part 17.

Of course Paradise Lost contains lots of allusions from The Bible and we cannot ignore them.

The most significant part is story of Adam and Eve. Story of Adam and Eve inspired lots of

writers and poets and the most successful one is, of course, John Milton.

In the part of Genesis, The Bible gives ideas about creating of World. It is a long passage and

it contains story of Adam and Eve’s creation. There is an important part which is mentioning

about Adam and Eve and, of course, Eden. John Milton also mentions about Eden in Paradise

Lost, and this is a good example for Biblical allusion.

As we know that, Paradise Lost is considered as a Biblical story and The Bible contains lots

of stories, one of them is story of Adam and Eve and their disobedience. After creation of

Adam, God says, “It is not good that man should be alone” and God decides to create Eve by

using Adam’s one of ribs. Then Eve comes and Adam thinks that she should be his wife. In

Paradise Lost, John Milton tells this story in Book VIII; he re-writes the story and gives

important allusions from The Bible.

In The Bible, there is a part about Jacob’s meeting with Mahanaim. In there God’s angel met

with him. Of course John Milton does not ignore this part of Genesis and says, “Not that more
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glorious, when the Angels met, Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw.” The parts of “Angels

met” and “Mahanaim” are allusions. We saw that Angels in The Bible and they are God’s

Angels. Jacob is also biblical character and lastly, Mahaniam takes place in The Bible.

Paradise Lost is full of biblical stories; another important allusion is taken from Revelations.

Revelations part contains apocalypse and gives ideas about what will happen. In part 12:3-12

says that “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon,

having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crown upon his head.” John Milton summarizes

that part by saying “Th’Apocalyps, heard cry in Heaven aloud, Then when the dragon, put to

second rout” As we already have known that, that dragon which is mentioned is biblical

character and continues, “Wo to the inhabitants on earth! That now, while time was, out first

Parents had bin warned.”

As a conclusion of this part, The Holy Book has given ideas and will continue to give

ideas to poets and writers. The most important thing is using it properly. John Milton, as a

great poet, takes this book and analyses very well. He summarizes The Bible and creates a

new World for his Paradise Lost. While we are reading Paradise Lost we can have ideas

about The Bible and also can read John Milton’s ideas about those biblical stories. We can

find a lot of allusions in Paradise Lost we cannot count them by one by and most of them are

from The Bible that is why Paradise Lost is considered as a biblical story.

Paradise Lost is a product of a man’s extraordinary Protestant imagination. The poem

remains a nation English Protestant epic. Although the poet assumes the veil of universal

prophecy, the epic situates abstract theological and philosophical ideas in the specific point in

time. (Edinburgh University Press.)

Paradise Lost endures essentially a nation English Protestant epic born of the bureaucratic

and religious catastrophe of seventeenth century and addressed, as the summons to Book VII
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announces, to a “fit audience… though few” (31) of like-minded Protestant revolutionary

readers who have apparently suffered and lost with Milton in the origin of liberty and

religious disobedience. Although its poet thinks the veil of universal prophecy, the epic

situates its unreal theological and philosophical ideas in the permutation of rebellion and

conflict, as played out in a very specific point in time, within a definitely English political-

historical narrative of Civil War, regicide and the delicate English dream of a republican

federation.

The Biblical myth of the “Fall” in Milton’s respect not some remote aete, or cause, for all

human sinfulness, but event of ruinous moral and spiritual error which mankind obediently

repeated throughout its fallen history, and will continue to do so until the Second Coming

when “one greater man shall restore use and regain the blissful seat.”

In Paradise Lost specifically, it is the theoretical axis around which the epic verse lean,

forcing the reader to review continually, instead of absolutely accept the timeless ideas the

poem otherwise examine. In order to have a better sense of this influential process at the heart

of the text it helps hence to understand something about the historical forces which

constructed Milton’s imaginative commitment with his subject.

John Milton who came to write Paradise Lost was a profound subversive in the full sense of

the term, in his work, politics and doctrinal ideology, but he was not always so. As the

biography of Milton by Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns shows, John Milton’s

radicalism should be accepted as a growth which drove him from the ambiguity and open

concern of childhood to the deeply contradiction and complex aspect of old age. The

suspicion and curiosity of his youth always built John Milton’s intellectual approach to the

World, but after the terrible events of the civil war and his own background in its shade, the
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innocence of childhood was gone and with his innocence an eagerness to compromise was

gone too. John Milton was not born a radical revolutionary but he turned into one.

His lifetime covered the rise of Laudianism in the English Church and the Personal

Rule of Charles I, the civil war and crushed king’s remarkable exploratory and execution

outward the Palace of Whitewall on 30 January 1649, the consecutive creation of the

republican Commonwealth and Cromwell’s Protectorate, and eventual mishap of the

republican regime and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During the life time, Milton

never stood by as history unfurls around him- he staked his interest in shaping it. Whether as

an independent pamphleteer, as the clerk for external languages for Cromwell’s Council of

State, or as a self-styled poet-prognosticator,

John Milton consistently took an effective interest in what he recognized to be h,is bounden

Christian charge to help reform and mould the English Church and State, and fight for the

Reformed Christian’s inalienable right to seek, and fight for liberty. Milton left aside his

dominant epic aim and launched himself into the communal arena against the environment of

the civil war and emerging republic as a pamphleteer and defender, staking his home and

international notoriety as a defender of regicide and the English republican case.

While Milton indeed from the discrimination of the Presbyters, as a faithful rationalist

with a clear impression of his self-worth as a polished poet and philosopher he also had

tenderness for the growing phenomenon of religious eagerness and mysticism which took

essence in many of breeding radical sects thriving under the banner of “liberty of conscience.”

Just as he had no tolerance for dictatorial potentates in Church and state, Milton had nothing

but antipathy for mobs of uneducated, uncivilized zealots whose irreverent agendas he

thought of as barbaric. For John Milton, being non-partisan in political and sectarian matters

progressively came to mean being on your own, even when he could agree with, or tie
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inspiration from the metaphysical or political ideas of this parochial group on the religious

edge of English society The conclusion was an inconsistency, while some of his belligerent

tracts, for example in Areopagitica or later Of True Religion, John Milton resisted freedom of

conscience on the many different religious confessional situation it gave rise to as

fundamental of liberty, he also expected naively that such a free changes of opinions would

allow for a supreme reality to emerge which any analytical, conscientious Christian should be

able to see for themselves, and accept it. When this broke down, when all that materialize was

discord, John Milton leaned to evacuation defensively into his church of one, defending his

projected persona’s purity from what he refers to indirectly in Paradise Lost as “the

barbarous dissonance, Of Bacchus and his revellers.” (VII; 32-3) The quotation here is to the

fantasy of Orpheus, the archetypal poet and singer, with whom Milton often described in his

texts. Just as Orpheus, who could move stones with his melody, was finally mangled to pieces

by the hysterical handmaidens of Bacchus for picking up the rational, refined music of Apollo

to the strident, hard warming music of the wine god, so John Milton was afraid of his singular

claim to honour as a raised child of the Muses would be gone down amid the cacophony of

contradicting radicals bent on nothing but political as well as metaphysical anarchy.

Matters came to a head consecutive Cromwell’s death on 3 September 1658, when what little

order and system there was under the legislator government quickly collapse. It was now

becoming lavishly clear even to the optimist Milton, still in the work of the government that

the dream of a fitting English republican society of cultured, open minded Christians was

melting away in front the grim realities of narrow minded politics, hunger for power, religious

bigotry and immobilize schism. Tyranny was bringing up its head again. No relevant leader

could be found enough for impressive personal gap.

John Milton started to write Paradise Lost, though again courageously and foolishly shoved

his achievements into belligerent composition in shot to summarize the basis of radical
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Christian and bureaucratic liberty he believed the English republic should be established. As

signals to rebuild the monarchy heightened, Milton’s sensibility of disaffected isolation grew

into more intense, as did his neglect for the English people’s slavish abasement in willingly

exposing themselves to what he fearlessly called on the eve of the Restoration the “detested

thraldom of kingship”- it was the Fall of Adam and Eve again.

Following the Restoration of the monarch in 1660, for reasons which are not

absolutely fine, John Milton the prominent regicide escaped the scaffold and dissimilar many

of his subversive friends was only shortly imprisoned. On 2 August 1660, Milton had to

experience the news that hangman in London was openly burning his indexed books by an

order of the king. These were years of solitude, financial difficulty, smear and nonstop danger

for the blind and now ageing Milton. He composed Paradise Lost with his family, friends.

They help him to complete his work. The autobiographical lines appeal to Urania, the divine

muse, in the beginning of Book VI of the epic paint and astonishing picture of Milton’s sense,

but also of his sense of powerful art, as he imagines the muse of direct mystical inspiration

visiting him nightly, guide him lines of the poem;

Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged

To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,

On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues;

In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,

And solitude; yet not alone, while thou

Visit’st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn

Purples the east: still govern thou my song,

Urania, and fit audience find, though few. (VII; 23-32)

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A sense of civic, personal, and creative seclusion and loss created then the artistic positions
which constructed Paradise Lost. All of Milton’s contributions as a poet, polemicist, scholar,
teacher and thinker came together in an epic creation conscious with his belligerent aptitutes
and rhetorical ability, but also with his extraordinary compassion as an instructor and deep
philosophical scholar.

The conclusion is a ballad that reaches to paradise and inferno and all that bridges
between them, but which lasts forever sourced in the very English planet of polity, culture,
and conflict from which it became. (Edinburg University Press.)

Milton used his lifetime ideas, theological, philosophical and political questions in
Paradise Lost. The most important idea for Paradise Lost is the entire created universe is part
of a unified material continuum. John Milton immersed into Paradise Lost a period of
learning and thinking on a wide dimension of theological, philosophical and political
questions. The poem also follows his dimension of scholarly interests in astronomy, history,
logic, law, mathematics, music, the New World and travel anecdotes, and the natural created
world, God’s makes believe “book of nature”. As it is unimaginable to do authority to all of
these theoretical elements of Paradise Lost in the extension of such a short introductory
analysis, readers are inspired to consult the annotated bibliography for further reading and the
text and review section of this Guide to achieve some sense of the complicated range of
Milton’s thought as it is followed in the poem. Nevertheless, coming to terms with some of
the basic ideas Milton examines poetically in Paradise Lost is necessary to achieve a deeper
recognition of the poem’s psychological complexity, and what follows is a concise outline of
these.

It should always be reminded that Milton was not meticulous or original theologian,

philosopher or political thinker as far as the opinions themselves are concerned. He was,

however, highly initial and independent in the poetic and narrative synthesis of the various ,

often incompatible opinions deployed in the service of his “great argument” (I.24) in

Paradise Lost. Milton’s thinking was always expanding, and he leant to adjust his positions

and ideas of key questions depending on the background and the period in his life time, so

that using Milton’s previous compositions, for instance, to illuminate opinions in Paradise

Lost can be slippery enterprise. Be that as it may, we notice what Milton thought about of the
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flaming issues of his day, specifically in doctrine, thanks in massive part to composition Latin

article known as De Doctrina Christina, now thought on be doubtless the work of Milton. The

article in question is a methodical theological pamphlet from the late 1650s. The essay sets

out a rather unorthodox Protestant dogma, specifically well-known for its ideas on creation

being ex Deo (from God) instead of ex nihilo (from nothing), its mortalism, and a Christology

which does not accept traditional Trinitarian idea as an unbiblical scholarly innovation.

The mental make-up of Paradise Lost is perfect understood in the background of the

mixed with Protestant-spiritual and humanist scholarly traditions in which Milton was

informed and which built his thinking. The two beliefs often overlapped in Milton’s England

and accomplished each other, but not always cooperatively. As a faithful Protestant, John

Milton believed that it was up to each particular Christian to read The Bible for themselves,

especially in matters connected to individual justification through faith and final salvation,

and specifically The New Testament, was composed by the prophets and proponent thorough

the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that the ending text contained the most perfect,

unadulterated heavenly truth depose to the New Covenant under Christ between fallen

humankind and God. However, whereas Calvinist believed that a reader’s capacity to

interiorise The Bible’s one true metaphysical sense was a revelatory activity of superimposed

grace enlightening the passive readers. As an applied humanist believing in the basic dignity

of man’s rational capabilities, Milton departed accordingly from mainstream Calvinism in

important ways. For Milton, reason was a religious gift not to be squandered and its free act in

divine matters ennobled and lifted fallen man from his disgraceful imperfections.

Contentiously for a Protestant writing in a broadly Calvinist milieu, so Milton rarely

recognized directly his own idea of sinfulness as most puritans leant to do, and always

asserted that the sort of central brightness Calvinists and other more profound Protestants lay

demand to should be translated into rational and literary cogency.

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Milton saw himself as inheritor not just to be rational legacy of the Genevan

Reformation, but also to the Italian Renaissance’s bright philosophy of mankind which talked

of each individual as a different, morally answerable microcosm at the centre of God’s

creation. Appropriately to this largely Neoplationic, indifferently Christian scheme, man has a

choice either actively to grasp through learning his created sanctity as a rational being and so

rise to the height of the heavenly intelligences, or forfeit this eternal birth right, becoming a

labourer to sensual greed and barbarity. This tradition placed appropriate attention on the role

of “right reason” in culture and nurture as an antidote against fallen nature, and promoted in

this respect the role of properly edifying poetry to move men to virtue.

Theodicy, or what is termed “natural theology”, pursues to address considerable

theological questions through a rational analysis of the accessible evidence in scripture and

the world at large. It is clear, why Milton’s courage project of justification more or less falls

into this category. In rejecting classical Protestant beliefs of alluring revelation and trying to

work out intelligently through the study of Scripture and human history the theological

accuracy he believed in, Milton of Paradise Lost is indeed something of an early modern

natural theologian.

By all of this basic amalgam between Protestant and humanist ideas of man’s place in

creation and his noble and spiritual agency grew Milton’s many other correspondingly

original ideas, Monism, and Christology.

The most significant opinion for and understanding of the poetics of Paradise Lost is Milton’s

assumption that the integrated created universe, and man specifically, is part of an undivided

material continuum, where essence and element are relative degrees rather than opposites, and

where all created beings strive to return to the single perfection and material agreement of the

one true God. Angels, for instance, are precisely material beings in Paradise Lost. They have
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an active existence and can apparently feel agony and go through wounds, but their bodies

dwell of such rarefied matter that they can assume any form they hope and act in all other

esteems as beings pure spirit. Since essence and matter are one material in this scheme,

extending from God in progressively less debilitated form, Milton’s monism is sometimes

called more professionally “animist materialism”. Milton’s monism expands from his idea,

that God constructed the world not out of nothing, but creating early a chaos of raw matter

drawn out of God himself, from what God before created everything else in the cosmos.

The Son in Paradise Lost arbitrates behalf of fallen mankind and attempts to atone for

Adam and Eve’s fault. As a theological belief this is entirely orthodox, but when such a

philosophical idea is translated into the dramatized action of a narrative something different

happens to the doctrine. How Milton assumed the role of Son in the doctrine scheme of

Paradise Lost is yet another field where he seems to have held a highly extraordinary

minority position within the Reformed divine landscape. John Milton’s nonpartisan reading in

Scripture led him to investigation the nature of Holy Trinity. However, whereas the De

Doctrina Christina document is notably and stridently anti-Trinitarian, Paradise Lost is only

circumstantially so. Many sentences in the poem usually explained as representing an anti-

Trinitarian position can also be read in oratorical terms of more hypothetical subordination

that may be reconciled after some straining, if not with orthodox Trinitarian belief, then

certainly with the insufficient biblical proof paragraphs Church Fathers have always pleading

the perception of one God who is three. After all, both the Father and the son are called “God”

in the text, and sensational cooperation between them as characters could well be directly

dramatization through epic narrative of a doctrine which classifies the cruelty of the Father’s

justice and the intercession of the Son’s generosity as two different but never mutually

absolute attitudes of a unified Godhead. Furthermore, the relation between the Father and the

Son comes out to be not one of draconian subordination, but of the Son working as a “Divine
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similitude” (III. 384) of the Father, involving maybe that the Son is a projection or extension

of the Father’s will rather than a pointedly inferior created being. Nevertheless, elsewhere in

the text it seems as if some form of sharply unorthodox anti-Trinitarianism creeps into the

fictional presentational of the doctrine. What may have begun as a classical exercise in

justifying and dramatizing the ramification of divine unification, as opposed to a rigorously

scholastic Triune unification, ends up showing in the poem a literary paternal communication

between the Father and the Son which suggests clear submission of the son to his father.

The divergence between the Son as an extension or the material of God’s insistence in time is

a very fine one and in doctrinal terms it could comfortably be analysed as a mart either of

unification or of subordination. Actually, interested readers might will to consider here the

arguable possibility of bewilder unity. Either way, however, the perception of divinity that

conclusively emerges from the text in its fully and singularly consistent and it depends, as

usual with Milton’s monism, or related distinctions and diversification within a monistic filial

hierarchy, rather than on simple Unitarian or agnostic abstractions.

As a conclusion, The Bible is an important resource for poets and writers and it has

given great inspiration to them. John Milton was an important poet; scholar, teacher and he

used his creativity on Paradise Lost very well. Paradise Lost is a biblical story and has lots of

allusions from The Bible. Paradise Lost is one of the important texts of 17th century. John

Milton re-writes story of Adam and Eve and uses biblical allusions in his poem that is why we

can say that, Paradise Lost is highly affected by The Bible.

In this dissertation I tried to show all important details about biblical allusions and The

Bible’s effect on Paradise Lost and Milton. Also, tried to analyse John Milton’s ideas,

historical engagement between Paradise Lost and Milton’s England in 17th century.

(Edinburg University Press.)

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REFERENCES

1) Reisner, Noam. John Milton's 'Paradise Lost': A Reading Guide. Edinburgh University

Press, 2011. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b1gs.

2) The Bible King James Version

3) Paradise Lost, John Milton

4) Peter, S., & Sri Ramamurthy, V. (2018). The Biblical Allusions in John Milton’s

Paradise Lost. Shanlax International Journal of English, 6(3), 26-30. Retrieved

from http://www.shanlaxjournals.in/journals/index.php/english/article/view/18