Comparing The Bible & Milton's Paradise Lost - Essay Example

This inclination to religious themes was manifested in his works prior to Paradise Lost. Some of these works are On the Morning of Christs Nativity, The Passion, and Upon the Circumcision (Luxon). This religious disposition displayed in his works continued after Paradise Lost was published; two examples of his works are Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes (Luxon). But among his literary works with religious themes, the best one would be his epic masterpiece, Paradise Lost. However, it would be objectionable to call Milton’s Paradise Lost to be the greatest literary work or the greatest epic of all time.

For one, Paradise Lost may be in some way, a copy of the accounts of Moses about man’s first offense against God. The plot from the Bible was adapted in poetry form but Milton intricately laced the story with descriptive details that even include dialogues between Satan and the other rebel angels; narrations about the origin of the world by an angel named Raphael; and conversations between Adam and Eve. Another reason would be its similarities with the early epics Aeneid by Virgil and Iliad by Homer.

Paradise Lost is analogous to Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Iliad mainly because of their similarities in their source of inspiration. Other noticeable similarities would be on the plot, the characters involved and the relationships of the characters to each other in the three epics. Before giving further details about Paradise Lost’s similarities with the other two epics, it would be best to know beforehand Milton’s literary basis in writing Paradise Lost and that would be the Bible. The fall of man as accounted in Paradise Lost has some similarities and differences from the Biblical account of the entry of sin in earth.

Being based on the Bible, the similarities are very obvious, but the differences require to be discussed. In the