Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events of the past, present and future regarded as a whole. Beginning means the point of time or space which something starts; the process of coming or being brought into being.
LOST has served up events of the past, present and future in a ball of tangled strings. Bringing Richard to the island was one of Jacob's strings. Richard's presence on the island was the process of being brought into a spiritual being in the realm of the dead.
Richard would have been hanged for killing the doctor. His sin was not absolved, but in a trick of fate he was sold into slavery (another sin) to board a doomed vessel destined for the New World. This New World was death. For the tidal wave that crested over the Tawaret statue had to be more than 12 stories high, and like the 815 plane crash, in reality there would be no survivors. Merely, the souls perceive themselves as survivors in hell. Richard told everyone on the beach that they were dead, and the island was Hell. This is not the first person to tell the castaways their true fate: Naomi told them when she came to the island; Anthony Cooper told Locke and Ben that too.
Hell is considered by many religions as a place of evil spirits and suffering, where the wicked are punished after death. When MIB broke the wine bottle, some commented it was to symbolize "all hell breaking loose." That expression is one for sudden pandemonium, the name of the place where all demons dwelled in Milton's Paradise Lost.
The two main story arcs of Paradise Lost have now some connection to LOST: hell and Adam & Eve. According to the summary in Wikipedia (with my commentary inserted):
Milton's story contains two arcs: one of Satan (Lucifer)(which may be MIB's name that has not been spoken yet in the series) and another of Adam and Eve (the two skeletons in the cave, with the black and white stones). The story of Satan follows the epic convention of large-scale warfare. (Widmore has foretold this coming war for some time.) It begins after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and cast by God into Hell (as Richard proclaimed the island) In Pandemonium, Satan employs his rhetorical skill to organize his followers (much as Flocke is doing with the last of the Others and the 815ers); he is aided by his lieutenants (which could be zombie Sayid and Claire). At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers himself to poison the newly-created Earth. He braves the dangers of the Abyss (the realm of chaos between realms) alone in a manner reminiscent of Odysseus. (We have only seen the image of Jacob on Earth, being off-island, which leaves a gray area of who is really evil, or both Jacob and MIB as demons.)
The second story arc is of Adam and Eve's temptation and fall. Adam and Eve are presented for the first time in Christian literature as having a full relationship while still without sin. (The concept that has been a theme throughout the characters temptations on the island; the Seven Deadly Sins). They have passions and distinct personalities. Satan successfully tempts Eve by preying on her vanity and tricking her with rhetoric (which both MIB and Jacob are good at--- manipulation and control), and Adam, seeing Eve has sinned, knowingly commits the same sin. He declares to Eve that since she was made from his flesh, they are bound to one another so that if she dies, he must also die. ("Live together, or die alone.") In this manner Milton portrays Adam as a heroic figure but also as a deeper sinner than Eve since he is smarter than Eve and knows that what he's doing is wrong.
After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve have lustful sex, and at first, Adam is convinced that Eve was right in thinking that eating the fruit would be beneficial. However, they soon fall asleep, having terrible nightmares, and after they awake, they experience guilt and shame for the first time. Realizing that they have committed a terrible act against God, they engage in mutual recrimination. (This is like the infection that changes people toward the darkness, evil)
However, Eve's pleas to Adam reconcile them somewhat. Her encouragement enables Adam and Eve both to approach God, to "bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee," and to receive grace from God. Adam goes on a vision journey (recall, Locke's vision quest) with an angel where he witnesses the errors of man and the Great Flood, and is saddened by the sin that they have released through consumption of the fruit. However, he is also shown hope — the possibility of redemption — through a vision of Jesus Christ. (Redemption has been a major character theme throughout the show.) They are then cast out of Eden (banished from paradise, in such a way that true believers in the island have fought to return to it, like Widmore, Locke and Ben) and the archangel Michael says that Adam may find "A paradise within thee, happier far." They now have a more distant relationship with God, who is omnipresent but invisible (unlike the previous, tangible, Father in the Garden of Eden). (As some suspect, there may be an invisible but more powerful authority over Jacob and MIB who imposed the "rules" upon their conduct and actions).
