[Milton-L] (no subject)

[Watt, James]

This is an interesting question.  I'm away from my books right now, so I can't look for the answer there.  But I don't ever remember having been asked this in all my years of teaching Milton!  If I were back in the classroom, I'd say: Wow!  I don't know.  What a good question!  To find the answer I'd look at all the "Tree passages" of course, but I'd also ask myself how God decided on the tree.  As I recall from O.B. Hardison the whole POINT of the tree was its arbitrariness; it was chosen, that is, for no OBVIOUS reason (reminiscent of the choice of Abraham) in part to remove questions of fairness (i.e. Why did God choose the Best Tasting Fruit?  Or the rarest fruit, etc. etc.?). And look again at Satan; he appears to have an acute nose for the forbidden.  And now you're on the edge of the Slough of The Problem of Evil; so beware! beware! as Coleridge says.  I look forward to seeing what the others say.

Jim Watt
Prof. Emeritus Butler University
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From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of christy neary [christy.neary at hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 5:27 AM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: [Milton-L] (no subject)

HELLO ALL, Still having a problem with Satan ( haven't we all ). How does he know exactly which tree is the tree of interdiction? He eavesdrops ( pardon the pun ) on Adam & Eve's conversation and learns that it is fast by the tree of life, but this only narrows it down and does not identify it specifically.
Regards,
Christy

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