For context, I'm taking a graduate seminar on Milton and we just started Paradise Lost. It's often said that Milton and Dante were some of the first poetical treatments of hell (and that Dante was heavily reliant upon Virgil and other classical depictions of Hades)... which is naturally a problematic statement.

It's my understanding that the Hebrew Scriptures contain few/no references to the Satan that appears in the New Testament (referring instead to a tempter/adversary). What occurred between the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament that led to more popular notions of Satan as the devil emerging? In other threads that I searched, the Babylonian Captivity and Zoroastrianism often pop up. What are some good sources that discuss the origin of Satan's fall story -- where/when it first appeared, and how that 'myth' spread in earlier times? Did it become an element of certain Judaism sects that he appears as a character in the NT and is referenced by Jesus and Paul?

It's obvious from other prose works (Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, for example), that Milton read medieval rabbinical texts along with early Christian texts. Old English texts speak of the fall as well, so it's apparent that the tradition apparently grew from the end of the Hebrew Scriptures and during/throughout the writing of the New Testament and beyond.

Thanks!