(urth) (no subject)

[James Wynn]

>> James Wynn-
>> Ehh...The creation story in Silmarillion simply does not jive with Genesis.
>> I don't see how all the hammers and grease in Mordor could wedge it in.
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes-
> How does it not? Eru/Iluvatar/God speaks the world into being (the
> actual act of creation is his word Ea: let it be), just as in Genesis.
> If the details vary, well, someone as intelligent as Tolkien cannot
> have failed to notice that they vary in Genesis, too, where there are
> two incompatible creation accounts.

No Adam and Eve. No Cain & Able. No Garden. No Fall. No world-wide 
flood. No Babel. No "first born" in Genesis, although one could argue 
that there are in the Koran. And while the Eldar are reincarnated 
continuously until then end of the world, humanity escapes the "circle 
of the world" /but no one knows where they go/. There's room to APPEND 
the Second Covenant on to it after the fact, but Earth and Middle Earth 
arrive there from dramatically different places.

>> While there's nothing _hostile_ to Judeo-Christianity in Middle Earth, I
>> seem to recall that Tolkien said in "Letters" that he deliberately left
>> religion out of the books.
> That was specifically referring to _LotR_, and even there there are
> hints of religion, as when Faramir and company "say grace" before
> meals.

Eh..as you like. But who they are praying to is problematic given the 
rest of Tolkien's subcreation. Praying to one of the Valar seems the 
most likely, but that is problematic in a Judeo-Christian universe.

u+16b9