How Paradise Lost drew on Ephesians
A documented line of influence: John Milton demonstrably engaged Paul’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
Relevance
4/10
On Paradise Lost’s page
- Milton's faithful angels fight in Ephesians 6's "armour of God" — Michael's sword drawn "from the armoury of God" marks their panoply as spiritual, against the merely Homeric weaponry of Satan's host
- The whole War in Heaven is Paul's "spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" given a literal battlefield
- Read Ephesians first and Milton's angels reveal themselves as the church militant in arms
On Ephesians’s page
- Paul's "armour of God" (6:11-17) — the helmet, the breastplate, the sword of the Spirit — is the gear Milton straps onto his loyal angels in the War in Heaven
- Paradise Lost takes Ephesians' wrestling "not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil" and stages it literally across the battlefield of Book VI