Milton's “fleshly Tabernacle”: An Overlooked Biblical Allusion

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Notes

¹All quotations of Milton's verse are taken from Frank Allen Patterson et al. eds.

²The same verses are given in John Carey and Alastair Fowler's Longman edition of Milton's poetry (120).

³Likewise, Roy Flannagan suggests this verse as a source in The Riverside Milton (51 n5). And A. S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush provide all three references (2 Cor., 2 Pet., and Hebrews) in A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton (157).

⁴However, quite a few editors do not. There is no reference given in Campbell, Flannagan, or Kerrigan et al. On the other hand, Walter MacKellar, in A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, connects line 599 with John 1.14. He does not suggest—as I do—that this is a conscious allusion, but merely notes, “The idea of the incarnation is in Scripture most clearly stated in John 1.14: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’” (247). It is only in the Greek, however, that we see the connection with the tabernacle.