Paradise Regained

From his first few lines forward, Milton situates Jesus’s achievements in the context of Old Testament scripture. Jesus will bring about a new “Eden” in “the waste wilderness” (I.7): he will thus atone for the sins of Adam and Eve, whose disobedience to God warranted their exile from Eden and brought suffering upon humankind. Yet, there are other references to biblical history that situate Jesus’s work in relation to the larger story of Israel. Referencing the biblical King David, Satan indicates that Jesus is meant “To sit upon thy father David’s throne” (III.153); however, Jesus’s virtues of endurance and humility make him more like the long-suffering Job, another biblical figure of virtue who is referenced in Paradise Regained.

Although Milton has set out to write a Christian short epic, he nonetheless alludes to the pagan history and theology that preceded Jesus—and that, with the Roman Empire, persisted well into Jesus’s own time. Satan, for instance, rebukes Belial by referencing to a large number of mythological figures, both male and female (II.186-191). Moreover, Jesus explains that he is unimpressed with the bulk of pagan philosophy: instead of the subtleties of Greece and Rome, he prefers the lucid and powerful thinking of the Hebrew tradition. Pagan history can produce men of virtue (such as Socrates, whom Jesus does praise), but on the whole, pagan civilization is of questionable value. No less a villain than Satan values such pagan culture, and no less a savior than Jesus has been sent to overturn it.