[mark12_30]

The point being referred to was not The Tale of the Ring-- for one thing, Galadriel wasn't in the battle of the Last Alliance, and Elrond was, so of course there would be eyewitness things that no-one but he would know, and possibly also he would not have revealed until the tactical situation made it neccessary.

Also regarding the Dunedain-- I can easily believe that there were sme things that only Elrond knew about them as well.

However, those are not the tales that are in question when we are referring to The Silmarillion, which (as we have it) is Translations From the Elvish by B. Baggins. The implication above was that only Elrond knew the stories contained in the Silmarillion, and by the time that Bilbo wrote them down, they were fraught with error syuch as Turin's talking sword.

However, this is illogical. Bilbo presented Frodo with his three-volume set as Frodo departed Rivendell just after the Ring was destroyed. Elrond was still at Rivendell. So was Glorfindel. So were many other elves. The tales were well-known: Valaquenta, Ainulindale; Beren & Luthien, Turin Turmambar, Alkallabeth. The implication there is that Bilbo wrote his translations while there were plenty of folk around him to check his accuracy. Chalking Turin's talking sword up to Bilbo's wild imagination is taking Bilbo's scholarship in to serious question-- why would he invent such a thing when he knew his volumes would be around for quite a while? And why would Bilbo assume that after he gave the books to Frodo, no-one familiar with the original tales would have access to them? On the contrary, Sam had contact with Aragorn and Arwen long after Frodo and Bilbo had departed.

Again, I am not saying that everyone else knew everything that Elrond knew. But in terms of the five tales listed above, I would be astonished if Elrond was the only person that knew the tale well enough to pass it on to Bilbo. I would also be astonished if Bilbo's three-volume set went unread by any knowledgable elf thereafter.