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This paper endeavours to explore the points of similarities between the two poets, John Milton and Allama Muhammad Iqbal, with specific reference to their two famous poems, Paradise Lost and Shikwa Jawab-e-Shikwa. Using the comparative literature framework, it investigates how the two poets, belonging to different times, climes, religions, cultures, and writing in different languages, share a common ground in their thought and art. These include opening their poems with a prologue, justifying the ways of God to men, highlighting the social, political and moral issues, and suggesting the remedies. The paper also explores how Milton and Iqbal draw inspiration from their religious books, i.e., Quran and Bible. Moreover, the analysis also includes as to how the two works were received by the general public and literary critics. After a thoughtful analysis, it is revealed that several corresponding areas make the two works quite similar to each other. Finally, the study concludes that Iqbal's Shikwah and Jawab e Shikwa is like Milton's Paradise Lost attempt, though in a different context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does a sacred text look like? Are religious books materially different from other books? Does materiality matter? This article deals with three different aspects of material variance attested amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ancient Jewish religious text fragments, of which were found in the Judean Desert. I suggest that the substitution of the ancient Hebrew script by the everyday Aramaic script, also for Torah and other religious texts, was intentional and programmatic: it enabled the broader diffusion of scriptures in Hellenistic and Roman Judea. The preponderant use of parchment for religious texts rather than papyrus may be a marker of identity. The many small scrolls which contained only small parts of specific religious books (Genesis, Psalms) may have been produced as religious artefacts which express identity in the period when Judaism developed into a religion of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]