"And knew not eating Death"

Michelangelo: The Fall (Sistine Chapel Ceiling)

"And knew not eating Death" (PL 9.792)

(Image from Wikipedia)

In Paradise Lost 9.780-794, Eve -- having concluded that she can "feed at once both Bodie and Mind" (PL 9.779) -- decides to take the fruit proferred by the serpent:

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour [ 780 ]
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk
The guiltie Serpent, and well might, for Eve [ 785 ]
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd,
In Fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fansied so, through expectation high
Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought. [ 790 ]
Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: Satiate at length,
And hight'nd as with Wine, jocond and boon,
Thus to her self she pleasingly began. (PL 9.780-794)

Milton plays on an ambiguity in the phrase "to her self," for the next line will show her addressing the tree ("O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees" PL 9.795), but for a brief moment, we read her as addressing "her self" in an act of self-worship ... which, of course, she implicitly is.

But that's not my point today.

Rather, I'm curious about the expression "eating Death" in line 792. Scholars have long noted the double meaning in the wording, which can mean either that Eve is eating death or that death is ravenous (which it is, cf. PL 2.845ff), so the expression "eating death" has been pretty well looked into, I suppose. At any rate, I was led to a possible source for Milton's expression by way of Regina Schwartz, who writes:

Michael Lieb comments that Adam and Eve become unclean upon violating God's command, noting that seventeenth-century commentators also made the connection between the forbidden fruit and the unclean food of Leviticus. In The Forbidden Fruit: Or a Treatise of the Tree of Knowledge (1640), Sebastian Frank writes that the fall was an "offense" to God, causing man to become "unclean": we shall become clean again only when we "doe vomitt up the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evill" (14-16). Lieb's interest is in the prohibition a "extralegal and dispensational" -- not in any of its commemorative impulses (Lieb, Poetics of the Holy, 114-18). (Schwartz, Remembering and Repeating, pp. 113-114, n. 18)

This point concerning the "connection between the forbidden fruit and the unclean food of Leviticus" sounds fascinating, and I, obviously, need to read Lieb's book closely. Meanwhile, who is this Sebastian Frank -- or actually, "Franck," as I discovered through an online search that located his book with a lengthy title typical of texts back in the heroic days of printing:

The forbidden fruit, or, A treatise of the tree of knowledge of good and evill, of which Adam at the first, and as yet all mankinde do eate death moreover, how at this day it is forbidden to every one as well as to Adam, and how this tree, that is, the wisdome of the serpent planted in Adam, is that great image, and that many headed beast mentioned in Daniel and the apocalyps, whom the whole world doth worship : lastly, here is shewed what is the tree of life, contrary to the wisdome, righteousnesse, and knowledge of all mankinde : with a description of the majestie and nature of Gods word

This website lists the author as Sebastian Franck (note the "c") and gives the following bibliographical information:

London: Printed by T.P. and M.S. for Benjamin Allen ..., 1642

Franck actually published under a pseudonym (August Eleuthenius) and originally in German (Vom dem Baum des Wissen Gutes und Böses), as I discovered through yet another website:

41. August Eluthenius Forbidden Fruit.

Forbidden Fruit or Tree of Knowledge writ by August Eleuthenius

Ed. Note: Full Citation: Sebastian, Franck (1499-1542), pseud. August Eluthenius, Vom dem Baum des Wissen Gutes und Böses, translated, The Forbidden Fruit: or, A Treatise of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evill, of Which Adam at the First, and as Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death . . . (London: Printed by T. P. and M. S. for Benjamine Allen, 1642)

Most interesting for me is this phrase in the title: "the tree of knowledge of good and evill, of which Adam at the first, and as yet all mankinde, do eate death." Eating death -- as we've already noted above -- is how Milton describes Eve's act of eating the fruit, so I'd like to know more about Franck's views and whether or not Milton was aware of them. Likely, Milton did know since the English translation was published in London in 1642 (also 1640?), but I'd need confirmation.

Wikipedia, by the way, has a useful entry on Sebastian Franck, who was a German and Reformer in Luther's time, but though it lists the book that I'm interested in (as The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), it doesn't say anything about Franck's views on the subject.

That remains for another time...