Paradise Lost is divided into twelve books. Is number is rather important because according to the Bible twelve is the number of tribes of Israel and the number of disciples that Jesus Christ (the son of God who is equal to God and God at the same time) chose to become his main friends and to travel with him throughout his life. This is also important because Milton said he wrote this epic to “justify the ways of God to man (book1, 26).” Milton calls upon the same inspiration that helped Moses (the man who wrote book of the Bible which Milton is writing an epic on) to help him write. In order for Milton to get people's attention into the book as being something that God would agree with he had to use things that people about see throughout the Bible. Now we will dig deeper into the first book Milton writes.

Milton's fist book begins telling the story of the fall of man from Satan (the enemy of God who was once one of the highest angels) being bounded in hell, which is a place of no light and hope. Satan is there with all of his fallen angels and is permitted by God to live and “Heap on himself damnation (book1,215).” Satan, though he has been defeated, still wants to fight against God and he calls all of the fallen angels to Pandemonium, “the high capitol of Satan and his peers (book1, 756),” to talk of a way to still wage war against God. The Bible talks about Satan and his angles in hell. In Matthew 25:41, Jesus says that hell was created for the Devil and his demons (NLT). There are also all of Satan's demons which come from the name of foreign gods which were not to be served by God's people, Deuteronomy 5:7(NLT). Each of these demon's names are drawn from different parts of the Bible where they were to have swindled the people into believing in them instead of believing in God. Though all of these names and places are mentioned in the Bible nothing to with the summoning of the demons to Pandemonium is found within its pages.

Book two of Milton's Paradise Lost is about the terms upon which the demons which to get back at God. They question if they should get back at God in open war, of if they should do it secretly. They are all in did agreement over what to do until Satan puts the thought into Beelzebub's, Satan's second in command, mind to attack man instead of God. They all agree with this because is this way they are not fighting God and they get their revenge at the same time. Satan then takes up the cause of the fallen angles and he leaves hell on his journey to Earth. At the gates of hell Satan meets his children, Sin and Death. The Bible tells nothing of Satan leaving hell and meeting his children at the gates thereof. The Bible does talk of Death as another person in saying that he will be the last enemy to be defeated (1 Corinthians 15:26), but the fact that Sin and Death are at the gates of hell is not found in detail in the Bible. It is found in detail in one of the Lost Book of the Bible. It is called the Gospel of Nicodemus. This Gospel is not accepted by many and is thought to have been made up around the close of the third century, but there are also many ancient Christians how appeal to this Gospel. When Milton, was seventeen he went to Christ's College at Cambridge University. There he revolted against what he thought was the irrelevant medieval scholastic curriculum of Cambridge. In 1632, he graduated with a M.A. He could have very easily became a Anglican minister, but he felt as if the Anglican church under Charles I and Archbishop Laud had become too corrupt and too tied with politics (Parker). It wouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary for him to have studied these Lost Books of the Bible.

In the Gospel of Nicodemus chapter sixteen, Jesus Christ descends into hell. Satan and the prince of hell(Beelzebub) are arguing by the gates of hell, and they hear Christ say “Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, o everlasting gates, and the King of Glory shall come in”(Nicodemus 16:1/ Psalm 24:7). This caused the prince of hell to send Satan away and then he attempts to lock Christ out of hell, but in the end Christ comes and redeems all those who are locked in Abraham's bosom (which is talked about in Luke 16:22). This chapter, in the end, seems to be formed from both lost and book that are in the Bible.

The third book switched to heaven where God is. There the Son of God is at his right hand and all of the angels are before him. God knows that man will fall and he asks if someone will go and die for man so that they will not be separated from God forever, but once more live eternally. All of the angels and silent, but then Jesus finally say that he will do it and all rejoice and glorify the Son. This is the Bible where Jesus says that he was there before everyone else (). The Son of God becomes more glorious because he had decided to die for man, but to do it he must become lower than the angels for a time (Hebrews 2:7/ Psalm 8:5)

The fourth book is about Satan landing on Earth and spying on Adam and Eve (the first humans created by God according to the Bible). He over hears that they are forbidden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then Gabriel finds out that Satan is in the garden of Eden and he finds him and laughs at him because he cannot stand the punishment that he deserves.

Book five begins with Eve having a dream about her eating some food from the forbidden tree. Adam then prays to God and God sends Raphael to warn them of Satan and how he can choose between good and evil on his own free will. Raphael then tells him of the war in heaven. This story continues through chapter six and then in chapter seven he tell Adam of the creation of the universe in which we live. Milton seems to draw this exactly from Genesis chapter one. He even calls space the Chaos, which is one of the meanings for the Hebrew word that is used in Genesis to describe the Earth when it was first created and formless.

Book eight through book ten talks about the fall that is coming upon them and its actual happening. Milton goes as far as to say that Adam eats the fruit so that he will not be separated from Eve in her punishment. They moan after it has happened and they hide themselves from God. Adam says from the beginning that he does not want to separate, but Eve believes that she can stand on her own two feet. The jest of this is in the Bible, but not all of it. And none of this is in the Lost Books.

In the last two books of Paradise lost things start to get very interesting. Adam has sinned and he is kicked out of Eden, the great paradise that he had lost. There are told that they must force the ground to produce for them. Then God tells them of the things that will come in the future. He tells them of Noah and the flood; he tells them of Moses and the exodus; he lastly tells them of the sacrifice of the Son that will one day redeem the entire human race and bring salvation to all mankind (which is the meaning of Adam's name). This is by no means anywhere within the Bible and there is no way that Milton could have drawn this idea to parallel anything in the Bible. It does however fit in with the Lost Books. We travel once again to the Gospel of Nicodemus, but it doesn't stop there. This story of man knowing of the future and redemption of man through Jesus is also found in the Book of Mormon in a section called the Pearl of Great Price.

In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Adam is in the bosom of Abraham and he is speaking to all the saint of old and he tells his son, Seth, to speak to them and tell them of what Michael told him about Christ and that he will “come on earth to raise again the human body of Adam, and at the same time to raise the bodies of the dead” (Nicodemus 14:6). After Seth has finished speaking, all of the prophets and patriarchs of old rejoiced in these sayings.

The Book of Mormon is a book that was found by John smith, said to have been the last of the great prophets. He was supposed to have been the only man who could translate this book that God had lead him to. Upon his completion of the translation the book was taken away from man because it was made of solid gold, which would have just cause man to lust after it for treasure.

In the Pearl of Great Price, from the Book of Mormon, there are two books in which man is told about the future of mankind. One is called the Book of Moses. Moses is told of all the things of the future of man and even gives praises to the Son of the living God, which he does not do in the Bible. It even says that Satan was cast out of Heaven by the power of God's “Only Begotten” (Moses 4:3). The next book is called the Book of Abraham. Abraham (who is called the founder of the Jewish nation and the first man to be called a Hebrew in the Bible) is told of the Redeemer, and he praises God for him. This book also talks of God speaking directly to his Son when he creates the world in the beginning, which is not in the Bible, but the Bible hints at it in later books.

Milton writes this great epic about the fall of mankind and how mankind went from Paradise to Paradise Lost. Though many of his books and most of his words seem to go hand and hand with the Bible, there are still many parts that do not. If one is to read Milton's epic one needs to understand what is really going one within this epic. Though one can think about all of the things that Adam said and how the war in heaven was, the truth of the matter is than many of those details are not mentioned in the great book upon which his faith and the faith of all Christianity is founded upon. This is not to say that his book is not a great master piece, but it is to say that it is not the entire truth and does not seek to show the exact truth as it is in the Word of God. His reason for writing this epic then could not have been to show people what God did and what man did, but to get people to think about what went on. it could have possible to fulfill Joshua 1:8, which says to meditate on God's law day and night, only then will you succeed. Whatever the reason for his writing one must know that not all truth lies within this great epic.

Milton's God is a subtle dictator that demands justice from His people when they've failed to offer Him their undivided love and affection or have sinned against Him. Yet God, or Jesus, takes all the blame. This becomes evident when God says the He created Adam and Eve “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (3.99).

It was apparent that God created a tree for Adam and Eve to be inclined to eat from. It is humankind's way to naturally want to do something somebody tells you not to do. Milton has shown that all evil temptations originate from God throughout the entire poem. It was God who created man in the same flesh as He, with the same curiosity as He, and with the same temptations as He, and told them they may eat from everything in the Garden but that one single tree. The whole purpose of the tree was to serve as a hindrance if not, what else?

Satan was able to move freely about and man wasn't. Milton wasn't making a very good person out of God in this epic poem. It's as if God desires man to sin; like he has orchestrated the ruin of man before it has even begun. Satan knows just what he is doing and God knows what Satan is doing. Why did He set mankind up for failure?

If God is indeed a persecutor, then one needs to look at the revolt of Lucifer. Lucifer rebelled against God, hating and rejecting the love He had to offer. Lucifer's failed usurping motivated other angels to defect and take his side. These angels “[disliked] his reign, and [Satan] preferring” (1.102), made an effort to release themselves from “servile pomp” (2.257). Basically Lucifer had the angels come to believe that they were better than the degradation God was putting them through being servants, beckoning to His every call. He convinced them of a place where each of them would be held in high regards and they would be free to do as they please, “Live to ourselves…/Free, and to none accountable” (2.254-5).

The Bible paints a picture that God is full of grace and love, but when one looks at the close proximity of the ethereal beings and God, it might pose a question as to why the angels and Lucifer came to openly rebel against Him and despise His every being. The argument is that people believe God is a just God, (as He describes Himself in Romans chapter 3), and those who worship Him will live in His glory forever and those who sin against him will perish in Hell. This being said, one might only look upon Him as being deceitful and merciless.

Adam and Eve were fated from the moment they were formed from dust and rib. As soon as they were tricked to eat the fruit of the tree, God told them “because thou [serpent] hast done this, thou art accurst above...each beast of the field; upon thy belly thou shalt go, and dust shalt eat all the days of thy life” (10.175-178).

God magnifies all hardships to come over that of Satan. He (God) tells Eve that her and all women will now be servants to men and give birth in agonizing pain. To Adam, He says that man will be cast out of the Garden and made to work for the rest of their lives in order to provide for himself and his family. But of greater magnitude, God proclaimed Death upon all uttering “know thy birth, for dust thou art, and shalt to dust return” (10.208)

Satan and his legion were cursed by God into forms of serpents and scorpions and dragon-like creatures; forked, hissing tongues replacing the latter. “On all sides…/A dismal universal hiss, the sound/Of public scorn…” (10.507-8). So God transformed Satan and then gave him the option to repent and he may turn him back to flesh, but being so angry Satan and his legion would never do such a thing. Satan and his legion got off easy.

Forced into a state of despair, Adam questions his very existence. Why were him and Eve made to act so purely in the first place, when the omnipotent knew of their failure? What was the purpose of having them believe in an everlasting life when death was in the cards for them anyway? Adam also wonders if God even has a right to do this to them, when they (Adam and Eve) had never asked for life in the first place. “Did I request thee [God]...to mould me man...it were but right and equal to reduce me to my dust...to the loss of that, sufficient penalty, why hast thou added the sense of endless woes? Inexplicable Thy justice seems" (10. 743-755). He does accept the fact that because he sinned to God, death is just, but he can't justify why God would turn such a beautiful life into complete turmoil.

The thesis of “Paradise Lost” is Milton trying to convince us that God is just and good. Depending upon the reader, Milton's portrayal of God is different. The fall of Adam and Eve has paved the way of humankind. No one knows what it is like to be naked and not aware of their nakedness.

Milton's portrayal of Satan is very symbolic and very meaningful. Satan's character is described as people we meet and talk to today. He's illustrated as a force not to be dealt with, but yet people deal with him day-to-day.

The fall of Adam and Eve gives people a choice of free will. People have the choice to do what God wants, but having chosen wrongly, will have subjected the individual to incurring the wrath of God. In turn, that person will be subjected to the rewards of Satan, which is to burn in Hell. Milton's message is heard loud and clear.