I don't know if this is entirely related to the original question, but I have wondered this:
What if, by some freak chance, mankind and nearly all of its creations were destroyed (including all the religious texts, etc.), except for the Silmarillion? Supposing the people who next developed and inhabited the earth found the book, were able to translate it, and thought it was a history book of a distant age long before their existence? It's a long shot, but I think it is theoretically possible that the new inhabitants would make "the Music of the Ainur" their Creation story and adopt the rest as the history of their world.
But I'm just weird like that.
