1. Genesis: The Bible, pp. 7-19

William Blake, Ancient of Days, 1794

Chapter 1

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth...." Except, if it was the beginning, where did this "God" come from? That's the puzzle in all cosmologies: How did something get there out of nothing? Even with a big bang theory, where did the stuff come from that went boom? I guess the usual answer to the biblical version is that God is a spirit: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," we read in the next verse. (Except where did these "waters" come from?) I guess the solution is that "spirit" somehow created "matter," which is what this creation myth is dealing with: the beginning of matter.

In any case, "the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." So there is now "something" there to work with, a chaos of matter, perhaps a tumble of atoms, to put it in Lucretian terms. It seems to have been liquid: "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." And this spirit turned on the light, dividing it from darkness, and "called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." The first step in bringing order out of chaos: Lights on, lights off.

Also, significantly, giving things names: Day and Night. And once he's set up a regular alternation of the two, he has created the first day. (Not the first capital-letter Day, notice.)

Then he set himself to dividing these waters with a "firmament," some kind of structure that separates them into two layers. There's the water up there and the water down here. Again with the naming: "God called the firmament Heaven." And this took another day.

Next, he moved "the waters under the heaven" and revealed dry land. Which I guess means that back when the whole thing was chaos, the land was all mixed in with the waters, sort of a primordial soup, and on this third day God separated out the solids from the liquid. And he named them: Earth and Seas. As when he created light, he "saw that it was good." Nothing like a job well done. But he's not through yet: He has the earth produce grass and fruit trees and has both yield seed so they can self-perpetuate. This is a bigger step than it sounds like: God has just created life. And all of this on the third day.

On the fourth day, he goes about creating "lights," which seems to be something different from creating light, though it's not quite clear how. After all, he has already created Day and Night and evenings and mornings so that he could count off three days. But I guess what he does here is systematize the whole thing, so that it can proceed automatically, making "two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." And he likes what he's done here, too.

Animal life is next: fish and birds and "great whales." (The last seem to be neither fish nor fowl in the scheme of things.) And seeing "that it was good," he blesses them and tells them, "Be fruitful, and multiply," which he's shortly going to be instructing humankind to do as well.

On the sixth day he has "the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind." He started with creatures that live in water and creatures that fly in the air, so now it's time to work on the land animals. Why the priority here? He makes each of these land animals "after his/their kind," which I think means each as a distinct species, not a whole bunch of higgledy-piggledy individuals, like one dog with a set of antlers and another with eight legs. In any case, he once again sees "that it was good."

But wait, he's not finished:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping; thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Okay, a few things to puzzle about here. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Who's this "us" and "our"? Who's he talking to? Or is this just the divine equivalent of the royal We? Also, how come a spirit has an "image"? We haven't been told that God has eyes and ears and nose and teeth and two arms and two legs, but that is surely what it sounds like here. Also, isn't this a bit abrupt? Where's the business about creating Adam first and then Eve? It's coming, of course, but in this account the specifics of creating humans don't seem so terribly important. Notice, too, that this account doesn't specify just one man and one woman, but leaves open the possibility that God created a whole bunch of people at once.

So God tells these human beings, as he did the fish and the birds, "Be fruitful, and multiply." But he also gives them "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Lots of us are not happy with this concept of "dominion," but it seems to be a fait accompli. On the other hand, God seems to be a vegetarian, telling his human beings, "I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." And he has done the same thing, he says, for the animals: "I have given every green herb for meat."

So he sees "every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good."

Chapter 2

Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, from the Sistine Chapel, c. 1511

Everything's done and God's happy with it, so he spends the seventh day resting. It most have been a good rest, because he "blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it." And then on the next day there's some leftover work to be done, "for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground." But God does a little irrigating, sending up "a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."

Now we get a second account of the creation of humankind, which doesn't supplement the first version but rather complicates it. For "the LORD God formed man of  the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." (Notice that it's not just "God" now, but "the LORD God." Looks like we've got a different voice telling the story.) This God plants "a garden eastward in Eden" for the man he has created, making it a place with "every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." We're still vegetarians, it seems. (The "tree of life" seems to get forgotten in tellings of the story, and it's not real clear what its function is.)

The location of Eden gets a little more specific in the next few verses (10-14), as the narrator talks about the river that waters the garden and then divides into four more rivers: Pison, "which encompasseth the whole land of Havilah"; Gihon, which somewhat impossibly "compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia"; Hiddekel, "which goeth toward the east of Assyria" and is probably the Tigris, which borders Syria; and the Euphrates. Naturally, all attempts to trace any existing four rivers back to a single source are frustrating at best.

But back to this man in Eden, whom God commands not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day that thou eatest therof thou shalt surely die." (A rather pointless warning, since Adam -- as he begins to be called a couple of verses later -- can't have any concept of death until he learns about good and evil. God keeps throwing out Catch-22s like that.)

And now God decides the man needs "an help meet." But first he creates the animals -- which in the previous telling of the story he did before creating humans -- and parades them past Adam (so named for the first time) so that he can give them names. Again, naming things seems to be an essential activity. Then God puts Adam to sleep and takes out one of his ribs and fashions a woman out of it. So instead of "male and female he created them," we now get a primary creation, Adam, and a secondary one who "shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." This last seems to be Adam's etymology. And the moral of is that, as Adam says, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," which leads to the corollary, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."

Oh, and the narrator adds an aside: that "they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."

Chapter 3

Hans Baldung, Eve, Serpent, and Death, 1512

Enter the villain: "the serpent ... more subtil than any beast of the field." It would be nice to have a little more back story on the serpent here, to explain why in creating all the animals God made one "more subtil." But it left the field open for Milton and others to supply. The serpent sidles up to the woman (she isn't actually called Eve until 1:20) and asks, "Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Sure, except for the one in the middle of the garden, she says. God told them, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." The serpent, unsatisfied with this prohibition, tells her she won't die: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." (Notice that plural, "gods," allowing for a multiplicity of them.)

Eve doesn't stop to ask how the serpent knows this, just as the narrator here doesn't stop to explain what the serpent's motive for telling her the story is. She looks at the fruit and somehow sees "that the tree was good for food," and that it's pretty. And since it's "a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."

Notice that there's no beating around the bush (as it were) here, no dialogue in which Adam says, hey wait a minute, Eve, we're not supposed to do that. She does it, and he does it, and that's that. And the first consequence of learning about good and evil? That it's bad to be naked. So they sew some fig leaves together and make aprons.

But God decides to take a stroll "in the garden in the cool of the day," and when he calls out for Adam, they hide. When they're discovered, Adam explains that he wasn't dressed for the encounter: "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." Adam is not real bright, of course, and God asks the obvious question: "Who told thee thou wast naked?" But he doesn't pause for an answer. "Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"

Notice how Adam sidesteps responsibility here: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." He blames first Eve and then God, who gave her to him. Of course, Eve is no better at accepting responsibility: "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." The serpent doesn't get a chance to play the blame game before God curses him "above all cattle, and above every beast of the field," to go on his belly and eat dust. The children of Eve and their descendants will be the serpent's enemies, bruising his head, though the serpent will sometimes get his own back by bruising their heels.

Eve's punishment is the pain of childbirth, "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Adam's is a lifetime of labor, no longer wandering around the garden and eating at leisure, but tilling the soil, pulling out weed, until he dies, "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (There's an interesting tie here between the dust that the serpent eats and the dust that Adam becomes.)

Adam decides at this point to call his wife Eve "because she was the mother of all living." (So much for the inference from Chapter 1 that God created a number of human beings on that sixth day, but one still wonders where all the wives come from who participate in the begetting in the next few chapters.)

God makes them "coats of skins," putting an end to a vegetarian existence that would have pleased PETA, and says, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." There's that "us" again, and this time it seems to refer to other beings with knowledge of good and evil. It's not just the royal Us. Now he mentions that "tree of life" again: He doesn't want the man (and presumably the woman) to "take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." The tree of life wasn't prohibited before, but then it didn't have to be. Then God drives them out of the garden "and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Nobody, then, is getting at the tree of life.

But Cherubims? Where did they come from? There's a whole cast of superhuman beings that's just beginning to be glimpsed. Have they been there all along, before the "beginning"?

Masaccio, Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, 1427

Chapter 4

Titian, Cain and Abel, 1542-44

Eve gives birth to Cain and then to Abel. "And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground." Now, remembering that God had condemned Adam to till the soil and eat bread earned from the sweat of his face, you might think that God would approve of Cain's profession. But when it comes time for the brothers to make offerings to God, "the LORD had respect until Abel and his offering," which consisted of "the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof." But for Cain's "fruit of the ground," God "had not respect."

This makes Cain sulky, though God tries to talk him out of it: "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." Now, I admit to being a little puzzled by this myself: Who's ruling over whom? Cain over sin? Cain over Abel?  There are some mixed signals here at best, though they don't quite explain why, after talking it over with Abel, Cain winds up killing him.

God comes to investigate, just as he did after Adam and Eve ate the fruit: Where's Abel? he asks Cain, who claims not to know: "Am I my brother's keeper?" But God won't put up with a smart-ass answer like that, for "the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." Cain is cursed with bad crops: Because he spilled his brother's blood on the ground, "When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength." He'll become "a fugitive and a vagabond."

This is too much, Cain complains: No matter where I go, people will know what I've done and try to kill me. But God declares that if anyone kills Cain, "vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold," and he puts a mark on Cain to warn people of that. So Cain goes to the land of Nod, east of Eden, gets married -- uh, where did this wife come from? -- and fathers Enoch and builds a city that he names for his son.

Then follows the first of many series of begettings: Enoch begets Irad who begets Mehujael who begets Methusael who begets Lamech. Lamech has two wives: With Adah he begets Jabal, "the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle," and, perhaps more interestingly, Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ" -- the first musician. And with Zillah he begets Tubal-cain, "an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron," and his sister Naamah. Then Lamech does something very curious: He tells his wives that he has killed a man, and claims, "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." I'm not sure how he comes by that reasoning, but the Lamech murder case doesn't seem to have interested the narrator beyond this statement.

Meanwhile, Adam and Eve have another son named Seth, who fathers a son named Enos.

Chapter 5

Much begetting now, and a little backtracking, as the narrator, perhaps a different one, tells us again that Adam begat Seth who begat Enos. This time, we get a little chronology in the works: the ages of the patriarchs. Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years before he died. Sorry, nothing about how long Eve lived, but during that time Adam "begat sons and daughters," so she must have been around for a while. Seth lived to be nine hundred twelve, and Enos nine hundred five. They begat other sons and daughters, too, but it seems to be the firstborn that counts. Enos's firstborn was Cainan who begat Mahalalee, who begat Jared, who begat Enoch, all of them living up into at least the eight hundreds.

And here things get a little fuzzy. There was an Enoch before, remember? Cain's son. This Enoch is the father of the longest-lived of them all: Methuselah, who lived "nine hundred and sixty and nine years." But the funny thing about this Enoch is that we are told he lived only "three hundred and sixty and five years," a comparative stripling among patriarchs. Moreover, "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Not that he died, but that he was taken. You can bet that there's been a lot of speculation about this.

But another funny thing: The Enoch who was "taken" has the same name as Cain's son, and that Enoch's great-grandson was named Methusael, which is a lot like Methuselah. And Methusael's son was named Lamech, the one who was involved in the funny murder, as befits a descendant of Cain. But Methuselah also begets a son named Lamech. So are we getting a confusion of genealogies here?

If the Lamech descended from Cain had some interesting offspring, the ancestors of musicians and metalworkers, so does this Lamech, who is supposedly descended from Seth. He begat Noah, who begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Chapter 6

Things have gotten all muddled up in the begetting, and now they get muddled up in the telling. Men have begun "to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them." (Wouldn't be much multiplying without them.) As a consequence, "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." What's going on here? Who are these "sons of God"? Are they like other offspring of God, i.e., not men?

The next verse, unfortunately, doesn't clarify things:

And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

Whose days? Mankind's? Is this God putting an end to those eight- and nine-hundred-year-olds? And what does this have to do with the sons of God wedding the daughters of men? And then we read "There were giants in the earth in those days," and that the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men "became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."

All of this seems to do with what happens next: God decides that humankind has grown so wicked that he is sorry he created it to start with: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."

Still, there was Noah, "a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." We're also reminded of what we were told before: that Noah had "three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." So he decides to save them, out of all the "corrupted" men on earth. He goes and tells Noah of his plans to destroy life on earth, and tells him to make "an ark of gopher wood," giving him the specs in cubits, with a window and a door and three stories inside. He's going to cause a flood, "and every thing that is in the earth shall die." But he will make a "covenant" with Noah and his wife and sons and his sons's wives.

They are to gather up two of every kind of creature on the earth, male and female, and food for them. So Noah does as he's told.

Chapter 7

Edward Hicks, Noah's Ark, 1846

In this chapter, God refines on the "two of every sort" commandment: "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." Birds are allowed by sevens as well. Noah has seven days to get this done before God makes it "rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights."

So Noah gets it done, and seven days later the rains start. It is "the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month," and it rains for forty days and forty nights, covering up "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven." The waters rose up fifteen cubits (the ark itself is thirty cubits high) and covers the mountains. "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died." And the waters last for "an hundred and fifty days."

Chapter 8

In "the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month," the ark goes aground on "the mountains of Ararat." Still, they have to wait in the ark while the waters continue to recede, and on the first day of the tenth month they can see the tops of the mountains. Noah opens the window of the ark and lets out a raven and a dove. The raven seems to disappear, but the dove comes back. He waits another seven days and sends her out again, and she comes back with an olive leaf. But he waits another seven days, sends out the dove again, and she doesn't return.

The Holkham Bible Picture Book, Noah Releasing a Dove and a Raven, c. 1320-30

So Noah, now in the first day of the first month of his six hundred and first year, takes the covering off the ark and sees dry land. On the twenty-seventh day of the second month, he sends his family and the animals out to repopulate the earth. He builds an altar and makes "burnt offerings" of "every clean beast, and of every clean fowl." (Imagine having spent all those months cooped up in this smelly boat, and then getting slaughtered for a sacrifice.) And "the LORD smelled a sweet savour" -- he does seem to have a thing for roast meat -- and promises never to do this sort of thing again. He promises it quite beautifully:

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Chapter 9

Giovanni Bellini, The Drunkenness of Noah, c. 1515

Once again, God gives out the command to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." (He doesn't say anything about letting the sons of God meddle around with the daughters of man, but maybe he doesn't have to.) This time he adds that animals and birds and fish are afraid of human beings, but that humans are allowed to eat them, "even as the green herb have I given you all things." So don't worry about being vegetarians, if that was bothering you. Except, "flesh with the life therof, which is the blood therof, shall ye not eat." I'm not sure whether this is a warning against eating raw or rare meat, or eating something while it's still alive, but it seems to be the beginning of a new divine preoccupation with dietary regulations. Given the history of humankind's propensity to kill one another, he also warns, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." The advocates of capital punishment love that one. But he also promises never to destroy the earth with a flood again, and as a "token of the covenant" with Noah, he produces the rainbow.

Retiring from the shipping business, Noah plants a vineyard. Unfortunately, he's a little too fond of the grape, "And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent." Ham sees his father naked, and goes and tells Shem and Japheth about it. They enter backward, not looking at Noah's nakedness, and cover him up.

When Noah sobers up and finds out that Ham had seen him naked, he curses Ham's son, Canaan, for some reason, making him a servant to Shem and Japheth. This "Hamitic" curse has been used as a justification for slavery: Notice that in Giovanni Bellini's painting, the son on the left, presumably Ham, is black.

Chapter 10 

Since this is a new beginning for the human race, there are more begats. (One of Ham's grandsons is Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the LORD.") Among them, the three sons of Noah create the new nations of the postdiluvian world.

11. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 265-308

Books XI and XII

_____

The Son takes Adam and Eve's prayers to the Father, praising their contrition, and God summons a "Synod" of the "Blest" to announce his decision to send humanity "from the Garden forth to Till / The Ground whence he was taken, fitter soil." He commissions the archangel Michael to "reveal / To Adam what shall come in future days."

Adam tells Eve that he felt better after praying, and he hails her as "Mother of all Mankind." Eve expresses her gratitude at their reconciliation, and suggests that they get to work on their old business of tending the Garden, naïvely observing, since she's unaware that they're about to get kicked out of Eden, "while here we dwell, / What can be toilsome in these pleasant Walks? / Here let us live, though in fall'n state, content."

But Adam, seeing an eagle chasing some smaller birds and a lion ("the Beast that reigns in Woods") hunting deer and heading toward the "Eastern Gate," suspects that "some furder change awaits us nigh." And soon he spots Michael making his way through the sky toward them, "not terrible, / That I should fear, nor sociably mild, / As Raphaël, that I should much confide, / But solemn and sublime, whom not to offend, / With reverence I must meet, and thou retire."

Gustave Doré, 1866

Michael Burgesse, after John Baptist Medina, 1688

Michael approaches, and tells them their prayers have been heard and assures them that death is a long way off, giving them time to "repent" and cover "one bad act with many deeds well done.

But longer in this Paradise to dwell
Permits not; to remove thee I am come,
And send thee from the Garden forth to till
The ground whence thou wast tak'n, fitter Soil. 

Both are appalled at the news that they won't be able to stay in the Garden, and Eve laments that she must leave behind the flowers she has tended and named.

Who now shall rear ye to the Sun, or rank
Your Tribes, and water from th' ambrosial Fount?
Thee lastly nuptial Bower, by mee adorn'd
With what to sight or smell was sweet; from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower World, to this obscure
And wild, how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal Fruits? 

This speech strongly evokes a sense of loss in anyone who has ever had to move from a familiar home. For all his intellectualized bluster, Milton can occasionally touch the heart.

Adam, of course, is not so sentimental or so human. For him the loss is expressed in a fear of losing touch with God: "This most afflicts me, that departing hence, / As from his face I shall be hid, depriv'd / His blessed count'nance." Michael assures him that "his Omnipresence fills / Land, Sea, and Air." And he proposes now "To show thee what shall come in future days / To thee and to thy Offspring." But he puts Eve to sleep for some reason.

Charles Grignon after Francis Hayman, 1749

William Strang, 1896

Michael and Adam go to the top of the highest hill in Paradise, where Michael begins his preview of history with Cain murdering Abel. It's Adam's first sight of Death, and he's shocked, but Michael tells him there are "many shapes / Of Death, and many are the ways that lead / To his grim Cave, all dismal." He shows Adam some more visions of pain and suffering, which causes Adam to weep and ask the eternal question:

                                                Why is life giv'n
To be thus wrested from us? rather why
Obtruded on us thus? who if we knew
What we receive, would either not accept
Life offer'd, or soon beg to lay it down,
Glad to be so dismist in peace.

Michael says that the examples he has shown him are of those who "pervert Nature's healthful rules / To loathsome sickness, worthily, since they / God's Image did not reverence in themselves." (Actually, some of them are naturally occurring diseases, but Milton seems to regard illness as a punishment for sin.) Adam says that seems fair, but Michael admits that even if you practice temperance and lead a virtuous life, you still "must outlive / Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change / To wither'd weak and gray." Michael advises him to accept the fact. "Nor love thy Life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st / Live well, how long or short permit to Heav'n."

Michael shows him a vision of a prosperous land with herds of cattle, people playing music, and working with metal. In another part of the land they

                                              from the Tents behold
A Bevy of fair Women, richly gay
In Gems and wanton dress; to the Harp they sung
Soft amorous Ditties, and in dance came on;
The Men though grave, ey'd them, and let thir eyes
Rove without rein, till in the amorous Net
Fast caught, they lik'd, and each his liking chose

Adam likes what he sees: "Much better seems this Vision, and more hope / Of peaceful days portends, than those two past; / Those were of hate and death, or pain much worse, / Here Nature seems fulfill'd in all her ends." But Michael warns him, "Judge not what is best by pleasure.... Those Tents thou saw'st so pleasant, were the Tents / Of Wickedness, wherein shall dwell his Race / Who slew his Brother." And the women were "empty of all good wherein consists / Woman's domestic honor and chief praise." Even though "these fair Atheists ... now swim in joy, / (Erelong to swim at large) and laugh; for which / The world erelong a world of tears must weep."

Gustave Doré, 1866

Adam draws the moral himself: "But still I see the tenor of Man's woe / Holds on the same, from Woman to begin." Michael corrects him: "From Man's effeminate slackness it begins." Which is, of course, still blaming femininity for humanity's ills. He proceeds to show Adam a vision of war, which he claims to be "the product / Of those ill-mated Marriages thou saw'st." Finally, he gets to Noah and the Flood that sweeps away all this sinfulness, "and in thir Palaces / Where luxury late reign'd, Sea-monsters whelp'd / And stabl'd."

Gustave Doré, 1866

The Flood bums Adam out again: "O Visions ill foreseen! better had I  / Liv'd ignorant of all future, so had borne / My part of evil only, each day's lot / Anough to bear." That's the way it goes, Michael comments: People get too rich and prosperous and they "turn degenerate, all deprav'd, / Justice and Temperance, Truth and Faith forgot." The Flood will even sweep away the Garden of Eden:

                                   then shall this Mount
Of Paradise by might of Waves be mov'd
Out of his place, push'd by the horned flood,
With all his verdure spoil'd, and Trees adrift
Down the great River to the op'ning Gulf,
And there take root an Island salt and bare,
The haunt of Seals and Orcs, and Sea-mews' clang.

Adam's spirit perks up again when Michael tells him about Noah's virtue and the rainbow covenant that promises no more universal flooding, at least "till fire purge all things new." 

So on to the Tower of Babel, which will amuse the angels:  "great laughter was in Heav'n / And looking down, to see the hubbub strange / And hear the din." Adam also criticizes the presumptuousness of humankind for trying to build a tower up to Heaven. For example, how will he transport enough food up there to sustain the builders "where thin Air / Above the Clouds will pine his entrails gross, / And famish him of breath, if not of Bread?" Michael agrees, but points out that it's partly Adam's fault:

Since thy original lapse, true Liberty
Is lost, which always with right Reason dwells
Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being;
Reason in man obscur'd, or not obey'd,
Immedately inordinate desires
And upstart Passions catch the Government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free. 

In other words, true liberty consists in restricting the faculty of reason to those things that God ordains as correct material to reason about; otherwise, irrational passions take over and enslave humans.

Then God will get tired of humanity's folly and choose "one peculiar Nation ... From all the rest." He'll single out Abraham "and from him will raise / A mighty nation, and upon him show'r / His benediction so, that in his Seed / All Nations shall be blest." Of course, they'll have some trouble when they wind up in Egypt, and then they'll wander in the desert under Moses's leadership, but God will deliver the Ten Commandments to him, and establish the Laws.

Gustave Doré, 1866

Adam thanks Michael for telling him "what would become / Of mee and all Mankind," but he's rather bothered by something:

This yet I apprehend not, why to those
Among whom God will deign to dwell on Earth
So many and so various Laws are giv'n;
So many Laws argue so many sins
Among them; how can God with such reside? 

Well, don't forget that sin was "of thee begot," Michael points out. (He does tend to rub Adam's nose in it a lot.) "Law can discover sin, but not remove" it. So sacrifices and rituals of atonement are performed, and the Law is given to the people in anticipation of a greater sacrifice, a stepping stone toward "a better Cov'nant, disciplin'd / From shadowy Types to Truth, from Flesh to Spirit, / From imposition of strict Laws, to free / Acceptance of large Grace, from servile fear / To filial, works of law to works of Faith." Moses himself will not lead the children of Israel into Canaan, "being but the Minister / Of Law." They will be led by "Joshua whom the Gentiles Jesus call," a namesake of the Jesus "who shall quell / The adversary Serpent, and bring back / Through the world's wilderness long wander'd man / Safe to eternal Paradise of rest."

William Blake, 1808

He hurries through the reign of David and the Babylonian captivity before he gets to the birth of Christ. "The Law of God exact he shall fulfil / Both by obedience and by love, though love / Alone fulfil the Law." His death will redeem humankind for Adam's sin, "bruise the head of Satan," and defeat Sin and Death, and "then the Earth / Shall be all Paradise, far happier place / Than this of Eden, and far happier days."

Adam gets the point: His fall was a fortunate one. 

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good; more wonderful

Than that which by creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin,

By mee done and occasion'd, or rejoice

Much more, that much more good therof shall spring,

To God more glory, more good will to Men

From God, and over wrath grace shall abound. 

Michael reminds him that there's a lot of history to be got through before all that happens, and there will be persecutions of the faithful and "so shall the World go on, / To good malignant, to bad men benign, / Under her own weight groaning, till the day / Appear of respiration to the just/ And vengeance to the wicked." But it'll all be worth it.

Adam thanks Michael for all this knowledge and for teaching him "that to obey is best, / And love with fear the only God," as well as "that suffering for Truth's sake / Is fortitude to highest victory, / And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life." Michael congratulates him for attaining "the sum of wisdom," and assures him that if he adds

Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith,
Add Virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love,
By name to come call'd Charity, the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far. 

He sends Adam to awaken Eve, whom he has given "Dreams ... Portending Good, and all her spirits compos'd / To meek submission." She tells Adam that she has had such dreams and tells him to "lead on," which is the same thing she said to the Serpent. Cherubim descend, and Michael takes Adam and Eve to the Eastern Gate, which will be barred by "dreadful Faces throng'd and fiery Arms" when they look back.

Some natural tears they dropp'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guid:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitary way.

Michael Burgesse, 1688

Simon François Ravenet, after Francis Hayman, 1749

William Blake, 1808

Gustave Doré, 1866

William Strang, 1896

Masaccio, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, c. 1424-28

10. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 235-265

Book X

_____

As Samuel Johnson said of Paradise Lost, "None ever wished it longer than it is." And when you've reached the Fall, a lot of what remains is anticlimax.

The "Angelic Guards" depart from Eden, and are greeted with sadness in Heaven, although Milton hastens to add that it "violated not thir bliss." Apparently it takes a lot to get an angel down. God smooths things over a bit by saying "I told you so": He had said Satan would succeed in seducing humankind, but that's the way free will works. Meanwhile, he notes that Adam and Eve are puzzling over the fact that they haven't been struck dead yet, so to keep them from assuming that they aren't being punished he commissions the Son to go down and explain it all to them. The throng of angels follows the Son to the gates of Heaven to see him off.

Francis Hayman, 1749

Gustave Doré, 1866

Adam and Eve hear "the voice of God ... Now walking in the Garden" and try to hide, but they come out when he calls for Adam. Eve follows, though "more loath" to do so. "Love was not in thir looks, either to God / Or to each other, but apparent guilt, / And shame, and perturbation, and despair, / Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile." Adam's excuse is that he was naked, which elicits the obvious question: "that thou art naked, who / Hath told thee? hast thou eaten of the Tree / Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat?" Adam is reluctant to blame Eve, but he does, referring to her as "This Woman whom thou mad'st to be my help."

The retort is a sharp one: "Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey / Before his voice"? But the followup is typically sexist: "Thou didst resign thy Manhood, and the Place / Wherein God set thee above her made of thee." Eve, too, tries to pass the buck: "The Serpent me beguil'd and I did eat." God then directs his attention to the serpent in ways that seem to me unfair: the poor snake was just lying there asleep when Satan took over its body. Nevertheless, it gets cursed to grovel on its belly and eat dust.

Between Thee and the Woman I will put
Enmity, and between thine and her Seed:
Her Seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel.
   So Spake this Oracle, then verifi'd
When Jesus son of Mary second Eve,
Say Satan fall like Lightning down from Heav'n

Though here Milton is getting ahead of his story. Getting back to the first Eve, God tells her, "Children thou shalt bring / In sorrow forth, and to thy Husband's will / Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule." (He's had a little bit of trouble making that last one stick, so maybe the reporters got it wrong.) As for Adam, he'll have to work for a living, and it won't be so easy tending a garden because God plans to invent weeds. And since he was created out of the ground, he'll return to it after death, which isn't going to happen right away, as they had feared. But he takes pity on them for being so ashamed of their nakedness and provides them with clothes made from "Skins of Beasts." Milton isn't sure whether God skinned the beasts right then and there or made them shed their skins and put on new ones, like "the Snake with youthful Coat repaid. And then he goes back to Heaven.

Meanwhile, Sin and Death have been at work building a kind of causeway through Chaos, from Hell to the universe. And Death has smelled his "prey innumerable" in the fallen world. Satan is delighted to find that his children have been so productive.

Hee, after Eve seduc't, unminded slunk
Into the Wood fast by, and changing shape
To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act
By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded
Upon her Husband, saw thir shame that sought
Vain covertures; but when he saw descend
The Son of God to judge them, terrifi'd he fled

Now he encounters Sin and Death, and Sin gives him credit for his "magnific deeds."

Thine now is all this World, thy virtue hath won
What thy hands builded not, thy Wisdom gain'd
With odds what War hath lost, and fully aveng'd
Our foil in Heav'n

Satan tells them to go ahead and take over the Earth, "Dominion exercise and in the Air, / Chiefly on Man, sole Lord of all declar'd, / Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill." Meanwhile, he's going back to Hell to boast about what he's done.

The fallen angels await Satan's return, by Gustave Doré, 1866

He disguises himself as a "Plebeian Angel militant / Of lowest order," enters Pandaemonium, and invisibly takes his place on the throne, making a surprise entrance when "At last as from a Cloud his fulgent head / And shape Star-bright appear'd, or brighter, clad / With what permissive glory since his fall / Was left him, or false glitter." He addresses his minions with a speech about his glorious deeds, though he fudges some of the details. For example, he claims that "Night and Chaos wild ... fiercely oppos'd / My journey strange," when in fact they helped him. As for Adam, "Him by fraud I have seduc'd / From his Creator, and the more to increase / Your wonder, with an Apple." And he got away without being punished, he claims: Instead, God punished "the brute Serpent in whose shape / Man I deceiv'd."

                                            I am to bruise his heel;
His Seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:
A World who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain?  Ye have th' account
Of my performance: What remains, ye Gods,
But up and enter now into full bliss.
   So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Thir universal shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears,
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn

Gustave Doré, 1866

He and his followers have all been turned into snakes, and Milton does a nice job of imagining the metamorphosis: "His Visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare, / His Arms clung to his Ribs, his Legs entwining / Each other, till supplanted down he fell / A monstrous Serpent on his Belly prone." The crowd outside the council hall is surprised to see a writhing mass of snakes emerge from it, and they too are transformed. Then they see a grove of fruit trees that resemble the fatal tree in the Garden, but when they taste the fruit it turns to ashes in their mouths. Eventually they resume their former shapes, but Milton says that they have  to undergo this "humbling" annually "To dash thir prid, and joy for Man seduc't."

Sin and Death arrive on Earth, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Sin and Death arrive on Earth, but Death is disappointed that there are so few creatures to feed on. Sin tells him to start with the plants and the animals until there are enough human beings. She'll spend her time infecting humanity "And season him thy last and sweetest prey." In Heaven, God assures the angels that the ravishment of Paradise will not last forever, but eventually "Heav'n and Earth renew'd shall be made pure / To sanctity that shall receive no stain: / Till then the Curse pronounc't on both precedes." The angels sing a Halleluiah.

Meanwhile, there are some cosmic details to take care of, such as shifting the angle of the Sun to create seasons of extreme cold and extreme heat, and arranging it so the planets and constellations have their zodiacal effect on things.

Some say he bid his Angels turn askance
The Poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more
From the Sun's Axle; they with labor push'd
Oblique the Centric Globe: Some say the Sun
Was bid turn Reins from th' Equinoctial Road 

In other words, either the Earth was moved or the Sun was -- again Milton waffles on the geocentric or heliocentric issue. 

The arrival of Sin and Death also introduces "Discord" and "fierce antipathy: / Beast now with Beast gan war, and Fowl with Fowl, / And Fish with Fish; to graze the Herb all leaving, / Devour'd each other." (Before the fall, all the animals were herbivorous.)  The whole thing depresses Adam, who wishes he'd never been created:

                                                     O fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious Garden? 

He wants to die as soon as possible. But then he thinks that death might be worse: "in the Grave, / Or in some other dismal place, who knows / But I shall die a living Death?" It's the same fear that deters Hamlet from killing himself. And he realizes that he has also condemned his children to the same fate: "Ah, why should all mankind / For one man's fault thus guiltless be condemn'd, / If guiltless?" He frets about future generations blaming him, though his guilt is shared with "that bad Woman."

Adam rejects Eve's comfort, by William Strang, 1896

Eve tries to comfort him with "Soft words," but he orders her "Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best / Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false and hateful." He would still be happy "had not thy pride / And wand'ring vanity, when least was safe, / Rejected my forewarning." Why did God create "this fair defect / Of Nature, and not fill the World at once / With Men as Angels without Feminine, / Or find some other way to generate Mankind?" He then imagines how hard it will be for future men to find mates: They'll want some woman who won't want them, or who will be forbidden to marry them by her parents, or they'll meet someone who is already married, and so on. It's a catalog of unhappy love affairs.

Eve begs him to forgive her and to realize that she needs his help, "Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, / My only strength and stay." They may not have long to live, she says, so "Between us two let there be peace, both joining, / As join'd in injuries, one enmity / Against a Foe by doom express assign'd us, / That cruel Serpent." They both have sinned, she admits, "but thou / Against God only, I against God and thee." She begs God to punish her, not him. She is "sole cause to thee of all this woe, / Mee mee only just object of his ire." 

Adam is moved by her selflessness and says he should bear the brunt of punishment -- after all, he's the man and she, well, she's just a woman.

                                                          If Prayers
Could alter high Decrees, I to that place
Would speed before thee, and be louder heard,
That on my head all might be visited,
Thy frailty and infirmer Sex forgiv'n,
To me committed and by me expos'd.
But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of Love, how we may light'n
Each other's burden in our share of woe;
Since this day's Death denounc't, if aught I see,
Will prove no sudden, but a slow-pac't evil,
A long day's dying to augment our plain,
And to our Seed (O hapless Seed!) deriv'd. 

Eve also realizes the consequences of their having children, and suggests that either they abstain from sex or kill themselves, "So Death / Shall be deceiv'd his glut, and with us two / Be forc'd to satisfy his Rav'nous Maw." Adam is impressed that her "contempt of life and pleasure seems / To argue in thee something more sublime / And excellent than what thy mind contemns," but he's certain that God won't let them take the easy way out. He wants to have his revenge on Satan, and they won't get that opportunity if they kill themselves or don't have children to carry on their vengeance. So no more talk of suicide or sexual abstinence: "That cuts us off from hope, and savors only / Rancor and pride, impatience and despite." After all, the curse on them isn't all bad: The pain of child-bearing will be rewarded "with joy, / Fruit of thy Womb." (Easy for him to say.) And for having to work for his living, so what? "Idleness had been worse." He proposes that they ask God for guidance on how to deal with the changes in the weather, and how to use fire.

So they go to where they had received the punishment from the Son and confess their faults and pray for guidance.

9. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 202-234

Book IX

_____

Milton winds up for the punch by telling us the story is about to turn "Tragic: foul distrust, and breach / Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, / And disobedience." It's a "Sad task" he has before him, but he insists that the story is "more Heroic" than those of Homer and Virgil or those of "long and tedious havoc" of "fabl'd Knights / In Battles feign'd." His story has a "higher Argument," and he hopes that Urania will help him to "answerable style" and inspire his "unpremeditated Verse."

Satan finds his way into Eden, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Satan is back, having lurked in darkness for a week. He finds his way into Eden via a passage made by the Tigris as it flows out of Paradise, and turns himself into a mist as he "Consider'd every Creature, which of all / Most opportune might serve his Wiles, and found / The Serpent subtlest Beast of all the Field." And he launches into a soliloquy, expressing his admiration of Earth, but also his self-pity because he can't enjoy its delights: "all good to me becomes / Bane." And therefore he has to destroy it, "For only in destroying I find ease / To my relentless thoughts." He even lies to himself: "I in one Night freed / From servitude inglorious well nigh half / Th' Angelic Name." First of all, it took him three days, he lost the battle, his followers are imprisoned, and earlier estimates put his followers as more like a third than half of the angelic host. And now he finds God

Determin'd to advance into our room
A Creature form'd of Earth, and him endow,
Exalted from so base original,
With Heavn'ly spoils, our spoils

And to do his dirty work he has to disguise himself as "a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime, / This essence to incarnate and imbrute, / That to the highth of Deity aspir'd." So he goes in search of a serpent and squeezes into its mouth without disturbing its sleep, waiting until morning comes.

Satan in Eden, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Satan finds a snake to inhabit, by Gustave Doré, 1866

When Adam and Eve wake up, Eve has a bright idea: division of labor. Working together, she says, they sometimes get distracted: "Looks intervene and smiles, or object new / Casual discourse draw on, which intermits / Our day's work." Adam praises her -- condescendingly -- for coming up with the idea, "for nothing lovelier can be found / In Woman, than to study household good , / And good works in her Husband to promote." But he points out that the work isn't so hard and God doesn't seem to care if they take an occasional break for "this sweet intercourse / Of looks and smiles, for smiles from Reason flow, / To brute deni'd, and are of Love the food, / Love not the lowest end of human life." And he also worries "lest harm / Befell thee sever'd from me." Having heard about the fallen angels, he's aware of the danger.

Eve tells him that she heard that they had such an enemy -- she was standing nearby in "a shady nook" when Raphael told him about it. And she feels hurt that Adam doesn't trust her: "But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt / To God or thee, because we have a foe / May tempt it, I expected not to hear."

Adam backpedals "with healing words," though he's still concerned about how powerful Satan must be: "Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce / Angels." Eve points out,

If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit strait'n'd by a Foe,
Subtle or violent, we not endu'd
Single with like defense, wherever met,
How are we happy, still in fear of harm?

Good point, and not unlike the one made in Areopagitica about "fugitive and cloistered virtue." Of course, in that treatise on censorship, Milton was writing about the fallen world. Adam is trying to keep the world from falling, but even so, Eve has put her finger on the problem: a troubled paradise isn't really paradise. Adam is getting a little exasperated with her: He addresses Eve as "O Woman," instead of some of his earlier blandishments, but after lecturing her on reason and free will, he finally gives in: "Go in thy native innocence, rely / On what thou hast of virtue, summon all, / For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine." Milton is not happy:

O much deceiv'd, much failing, hapless Eve,
Of thy presum'd return! event perverse!
Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast, or sound repose;
Such ambush hid among sweet Flow'rs and Shades
Waited with hellish rancor imminent
To intercept thy way, or send thee back
Despoil'd of Innocence, of Faith, of Bliss. 

Satan finds his prey, by Gustave Doré, 1866

For sure enough, Satan discovers her, in one of the last truly lyric passages in the poem, one that echoes the earlier passage about Proserpina:

Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,
Veil'd in a Cloud of Fragrance, where she stood,
Half spi'd, so thick the Roses bushing round
About her glow'd, oft stooping to support
Each Flow'r of slender stalk, whose head though gay
Carnation, Purple, Azure, or speckt with Gold,
Hung drooping unsustain'd, them she upstahys
Gently with Myrtle band, mindless the while,
Herself, though fairest unsupported Flow'r,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.

Satan is smitten with both the garden and Eve, like "one who long in populous City pent, / Where Houses thick and Sewers annoy the Air," venturing forth into the fresh air of the countryside. (Hell is a city much like Milton's London.)  He's so stunned by her beauty that he "abstracted stood / From his own evil, and for the time remain'd / Stupidly good, of enmity disarm'd, / Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge." But if Satan is for a moment "good," it's because he's in a passive state, not because he's capable of being actively good. And it doesn't take him long to come to his evil senses: "Fierce hate he recollects." He gloats that he has found Eve alone, without Adam, "Whose higher intellectual more I shun."

And so he sidles up to her, not slithering on his belly because prelapsarian snakes apparently had a way of getting around on a "Circular base of rising folds." And he begins to sweet-talk her as "A Goddess among Gods, ador'd and serv'd / by Angels numberless." She's surprised that he can talk. So he tells her he learned how after eating the fruit of a particular tree. Naturally, she wants to see this tree, and he gleefully leads her there. "So glister'd the dire Snake, and into fraud / Led Eve or credulous Mother, to the Tree / Of prohibition, root of all our woe."

Naturally, she's disappointed: "Serpent, we might have spar'd our coming hither," she tells him. She explains about the prohibition, whereupon he puts on a "show of Zeal and Love / To Man, and indignation at his wrong." He begins to pooh-pooh the prohibition. He tells her he feels the power of this "Sacred, Wise, and Wisdom-giving Plant" and assures her that she won't die if she eats some of it. After all, he didn't. In fact, he's better off because he did: He can talk. "Shall that be shut to Man, which to the Beast / Is open?" Even if God forbade it, it's just "a petty Trespass." God won't really be angry, in fact he'll probably "praise / Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain / Of Death denounc't, whatever thing Death be." It's true that threatening Adam and Eve with death and not explaining exactly what it involves is a bit of a problem, but then we've seen the inconsistencies in this whole "knowledge of good and evil" thing before. Satan continues to make the point: What exactly is wrong with "knowledge of Good and Evil"? Wouldn't it be better to know what evil is so you can avoid it?

And finally he appeals to her pride: The prohibition was put in place "to keep ye low and ignorant." If they eat the fruit "ye shall be as Gods, / Knowing both Good and Evil as they know." After all, if a snake can become like a man by eating the fruit, won't a man become like a god?

William Blake, 1808

The whole thing sounds reasonable to Eve, and besides, it's almost noon and she's hungry. The fruit is "Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste, / Of virtue to make wise." So "she pluck'd, she eat." And the snake beats a retreat as "Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat / Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, / That all was lost." Eve gorges on the fruit until she is drunk with it, and begins to worship the tree itself. She even thinks she may have gotten away with it, that "other care perhaps / May have diverted from continual watch / Our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies / About him." She thinks about keeping it secret from Adam and "keep the odds of Knowledge in my power / Without Copartner." She would become "perhaps, A thing not undesirable, sometime / Superior: for inferior who is free?" (Precisely Satan's argument for rebelling against God.) But then if death is in the bargain, she might die and Adam would marry somebody else. So she decides she has to get him to share the fruit: "So dear I love him, that with him all deaths / I could endure, without him live no life."

Satan slithers away, by Gustave Doré, 1866

She bows to the tree, which has become her god. The allegory is obvious: She now prefers Knowledge to God. And then she's off to the bower, but Adam, who has woven a garland of flowers for her, meets her halfway, "in her hand / A bough of fairest fruit that downy smil'd, / New gather'd, and ambrosial smell diffus'd." She tells him how much she has missed him, when she really hasn't given him much thought until she realized she might die and he might marry someone else. And then she comes out with it: She's eaten the forbidden fruit, and feels great. And she did it all for him, she lies.

Francis Hayman, 1749

"Thus Eve with Count'nance blithe her story told," and Adam is horrified. "From his slack hand the Garland wreath'd for Eve  / Down dropp'd, and all the faded Roses shed." He sees her as "Defac't, deflow'r'd, and now to Death devote," and realizes that he can't live without her, that he can't "forgo / Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly join'd / To live again in these wild Woods forlorn." Even if God created another mate, "Flesh of Flesh, / Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State / Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe."

Lucas Cranach, 1528

What's done is done, he decides, and maybe it won't be so bad. Perhaps God won't "in earnest so destroy / Us his prime Creatures, dignifi'd so high, / Set over all his Works, which in our Fall, / For us created, needs with us must fail." So he decides to join her in the fatal act: "Our State cannot be sever'd, we are one, / One Flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself."

Eve rejoices: "O glorious trial of exceeding Love." And she proclaims, "I feel / Far otherwise th' event, not Death, but Life / Augmented, op'n'd Eyes, new Hopes, new Joys." This is as operatic as Tristan und Isolde, and ends with her urging, "On my experience, Adam, freely taste, / And fear of Death deliver to the Winds." So "he scrupl'd not to eat / Against his better knowledge, not deceiv'd, / But fondly overcome with Female charm." This is supposed to be a moment of horror, but long exposure to romantic excess makes it read like an apotheosis.

Adam gorges himself, "Nature gave a second groan," and a storm brews as the "intoxicated" lovers fall to it:

Carnal desire inflaming, hee on Eve
Began to cast lascivious Eyes, she him
As wantonly repaid; in Lust they burn 

He leads her "nothing loath" to a secluded spot where "they thir fill of Love and Love's disport / Took largely."

After the fall, by Gustave Doré, 1866

After "grosser sleep / Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams / Encumber'd," they wake to humankind's first hangover, "destitute and bare / Of all thir virtue." He berates her for giving "ear / To that false Worm" and bemoans the fact that he can't "behold the face / Henceforth of God or Angel, erst with joy / And rapture so oft beheld." They go to find something "to hide / The Parts of each from other, that seem most / To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen." Milton decides that the fig leaves they sewed together must be those of the banyan tree: "Such of late / Columbus found th' American so girt." In the seventeenth-century imagination this denotes that Adam and Eve have become "savages."

They start to argue, and Adam says he shouldn't have listened to her when she wanted to go off by herself: "I know not whence possess'd thee; we had then / Remain'd still happy, not as now, despoil'd / Of all our good, sham'd, naked, miserable." She retorts that he would have been persuaded by the serpent, too, and anyway,

Was I to have never parted from thy side?
As good have grown there still a lifeless Rib.
Being as I am, why didst not thou the Head
Command me absolutely not to go,
Going into such danger as thou said'st?

And so forth, berating each other but neither willing to accept blame. "And of thir vain contest appear'd no end."

8. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 163-201

Books VII and VIII

_____

Milton invokes Urania, the muse of astronomy, again to help with Raphael's account of the creation of the universe, though of course he doesn't want to be caught calling on a pagan source of inspiration: "The meaning, not the Name I call." His "Urania" is "Heav'nly born, / Before the Hills appear'd," and is the sister of Wisdom. He needs her help because

Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible Diurnal Sphere;
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 compast round

He alludes here to both his political situation during the Restoration and his blindness, both of which put his life in some degree of danger. All he asks for is "fit audience, though few," and protection from "the barbarous dissonance" that some interpret as an allusion to the court of Charles II, but may simply reflect an aging man's desire for the contemplative life.

Raphael tells Adam and Eve about the Creation, engraving by Simon François Ravenet after Francis Hayman, 1749

Adam's curiosity is, naturally, unsated by what "The affable Arch-angel" has told them, "things to thir thought / So unimaginable as hate in Heav'n, so now he wants to know how all this got started. Raphael warns him that there are limits to what he can know, "Things not reveal'd, which th' invisible King, / Only Omniscient, hath supprest in Night, / To none communicable in Earth or Heaven." But he'll make a go at telling him what he can.

God, Raphael says, put the Son in charge of creating the universe:

My overshadowing Spirit and might with thee
I send along, ride forth, and bid the Deep
Within appointed bounds be Heav'n and Earth,
Boundless the Deep, because I am who fill
Infinitude, nor vacuous the space
Though I uncircumscrib'd myself retire,
And put not forth my goodness, which is free
To act or not, Necessity and Chance
Approach not mee, and what I will is Fate.

What that seems to mean is that God fills all space, but that he chooses to hold back some of himself to allow humankind free will. It's unorthodox and maybe heretical.

William Blake, The Ancient of Days

The creation of the world, by William Strang, 1896

So now the gates of Heaven open and the creator looks out on chaos, "the vast immeasurable Abyss / Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wild, / Up from the bottom turn'd by furious winds / And surging waves." Using "the golden Compasses," he measures out a space for "This Universe, and all created things." And then

                                                   on the wat'ry calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infus'd, and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid Mass, but downward purg'd
the black tartareous cold Infernal dregs
Adverse to life

The land appears from the waters, by Gustave Doré, 1866

So God says "Let there be Light," and creates the sun and moon on the first day. On the second he divides "The Waters from the Waters":  The concept here is that the universe is surrounded by water but separated from it by the firmament. On the third day the land emerges from the terrestrial waters, both the oceans and the rivers and streams which "With Serpent error wand'ring, found thir way." This seems to be descriptive of the motion of water through the land, but it's also a kind of anticipatory pun on what's to happen later when Satan tempts Eve. Next come the plants, and the fish

        that with thir Fins and shining Scales
Glide under the green Wave, in Sculls that oft
Bank the mid Sea; part single or with mate
Graze the Seaweed thir pasture, and through Groves
Of Coral stray, or sporting with quick glance
Show to the Sun thir wav'd coats dropt with Gold,
Or in thir Pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriment

Creation of the birds and fish, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Then the birds, and here Milton takes sides in the old which-came-first debate: It was the egg.

Leviathan, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Creation of the birds, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Then on the sixth, the animals spring from the ground:

                      The Earth obey'd, and straight
Op'ning her fertile Womb teem'd at a Birth
Innumerous living Creatures, perfet forms,
Limb'd and full grown: out of the ground up rose
As from his Lair the wild Beast where he wons
In Forest wild, in Thicket, Brake, or Den;
Among the Trees in Pairs they rose, they walk'd:
The Cattle in the Fields and Meadows green:
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad Herds upsprung.
The grassy Clods now Calv'd, now half appear'd
The Tawny Lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from Bonds,
And Rampant shakes his Brinded mane

Insects, too, appear, including "The Parsimonious Emmet," the proverbial busy ant. And of course, "The Serpent subtl'st Beast of all the field, / Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen Eyes / And hairy Mane terrific, though to thee / Not noxious, but obedient at thy call." Somehow Raphael feels it necessary to point out to the unfallen Adam and Eve that the serpent is "Not noxious." (The mane seems to have come from Virgil's description of the sea-serpents that attacked Laocoon and his sons. Earlier he has also given prelapsarian serpents wings.)

The evening of the sixth day, by Gustave Doré, 1866

And finally God tells the Son, "Let us make now Man in our image," and gives him "Dominion" over "every living thing." And he takes Adam and his "consort" to the Garden and shows them "the Tree / Which tasted works knowledge of Good and Evil" and tells them that "Death is the penalty impos'd" for tasting its fruit. And then "the Creator ... up return'd / Up to the Heav'n of Heav'ns his high abode" and saw "how it show'd / In prospect from this Throne, how good, how fair, / Answering his great Idea." This is the only appearance of the word "idea" in the poem, and it has the import of the Platonic "form." The angels spend the seventh day singing the praises of this new creation, "Of amplitude almost immense, with Stars / Numerous, and every Star perhaps a World / Of destin'd habitation." Once again, Milton doesn't rule out the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.

So now Raphael asks Adam if he has any more questions: "if else thou seek'st / Aught, not surpassing human measure, say." Well, of course he does. He wants to understand celestial mechanics. But Eve has gotten tired of listening, and maybe a little resentful of the archangelic condescension: Back at the end of Book VI he referred to her as "Thy weaker," telling Adam to make sure she doesn't listen to Satan's temptations. So now, seeing that Adam "seem'd / Ent'ring on studious thoughts abstruse" excuses herself to go tend to her plants. (Come to think of it, isn't that Adam's job too, instead of sitting around listening to affable archangels?) If it weren't that Milton is so egregiously sexist elsewhere, we might be charmed by the observation that she knows Adam's account of what the archangel tells him will make for good pillow-talk later, that he "would intermix / Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute / With conjugal Caresses, from his Lip / Not Words alone pleas'd her."

To tell the truth, Eve doesn't really miss much in the archangel's account of the way the universe works, because Raphael pleads that a lot of it is known only to God, including whether it's geocentric or heliocentric -- once again Milton waffles between Ptolemy and Copernicus, even to the point of declaring that the debate is irrelevant:

God to remove his ways from human sense,
Plac'd Heav'n from Earth so far, that earthly sight,
If it presume, might err in things too high,
And no advantage gain. What if the Sun
Be Centre to the World, and other Stars
By his attractive virtue and their own
Incited, dance about him various round?

That's God's business, not man's, Raphael asserts: "Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, / Leave them to God  above, him serve and fear."

                                Heav'n is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowly wise:
Think only what concerns thee and thy being;
Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there
Live, in what state, condition or degree,
Contented that ths far hath been reveal'd
Not of Earth only but of highest Heav'n.

Adam swallows this and admits that he is sometimes guilty of letting "the Mind or Fancy ... rove uncheckt," and that he'll remember that  "to know / That which before us lies in daily life, / Is the prime Wisdom." So he decides to talk about his own "daily life," and his experiences since the Creation. Raphael is willing to listen because on the day Adam was created he was busy elsewhere, checking on the Gates of Hell to make sure the devils were safely bound up there. He heard sound of "Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage" coming out of Hell, so he was satisfied.

Adam tells Raphael that he remembers waking up and seeing "the ample Sky, till ris'd / By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, / As thitherward endeavoring, and upright / Stood on my feet." (Eve's first sight, of course, was of her reflection in the pool.) He discovered that he had the power of speech and could give names to what he saw, but he wanted to know "how came I thus, how here?" He lay down to sleep again, thinking that he was reverting to his "former state / Insensible," but dreamed of a being that brought him "over Fields and Waters, as in Air / Smooth sliding without step" to the Garden, "whereat I wak'd, and found / Before mine Eyes all real, as the dream / Had lively shadow'd." The "Presence Divine" then explained about the Garden and warned him about "the Tree whose operation brings / Knowledge of good and ill.... Sternly he pronounc'd / The rigid interdiction, which resounds / Yet dreadful in mine ear." And then the animals passed by, and "I nam'd them, as they pass'd, and understood / Thir Nature."

But something was missing. "In solitude / What happiness, who can enjoy alone, / Or all enjoying, what contentment find?" The "vision" pointed out that he wasn't alone, that he had "various living creatures" to share the Garden with, but Adam wasn't satisfied: "Hast thou not made me here thy substitute, / And these inferiors far beneath me set? / Among unequals what society / Can sort, what harmony or true delight?" God replied that he was "alone / From all Eternity, for none I know / Second to mee or like, equal much less." (A reminder of Milton's anti-Trinitarianism.) But Adam argued that his job was to "beget / Like of his like, ... which requires / Collateral love, and dearest amity."

The creation of Eve, by William Blake, 1808

The creation of Eve, by William Strang, 1896

God admits that he was just fooling with Adam: "I, ere thou spak'st, / Knew it not good for Man to be alone." And he promises to deal with the problem. So Adam goes to sleep and dreams that a rib is taken from his side and fashioned into "a Creature ... Manlike, but different sex, so lovely fair, / That what seemed fair in all the World, seem'd now / Mean." He wakes to find her gone, but finally beholds her "not far off, / Such as I saw her in my dream." He tells Raphael that he knows Eve is his "inferior, in the mind / And inward Faculties, which most excel, / In outward also her resembling less / His Image who made both." But he loves her so much that this doesn't matter, "that what she wills to do or say / Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best."

The angel is bothered by this, and warns against becoming overinfatuated with Eve, especially sexually: "if the sense of touch whereby mankind / Is propagated seem such dear delight / Beyond all other, think the same voutsaf't / To Cattle and each Beast."

What higher in her society thou find'st
Attractive, human, rational, love still;
In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true Love consists not; Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat
In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale
By which to heav'nly Love thou may'st ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause
Among the Beasts no Mate for thee was found.

Adam assures Raphael that it's not just sex that binds him to Eve but "Those thousand decencies that daily flow / From all her words and actions." But he also asks about angelic sex: "Love not the heav'nly spirits, and how thir Love / Express they, by looks only, or do they mix / Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?" Raphael blushes and says, "Let it suffice thee that thou know'st / Us happy." And he leaves Adam with a warning: "take heed lest Passion sway / Thy Judgment to do aught, which else free Will / Would not admit."

Engraving by Charles Grignon after Francis Hayman, 1749

Raphael departs, by Gustave Doré, 1866