[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

But surely we have in Bilbo's own story a clear account of a 'false' version of events deliberately concocted by a scribe.

This is true, but I don't know how heavily one can lean on this in arguing a general point about the Translator Conceit. The 'false version' was after all a very special case - it was in fact a clever trick, a gimmick, used to get around the problem of contradictions between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I very much doubt that Tolkien would have thought of or used such a device had he not been faced with such a situation.

Plus, which of the many versions of the Sil are the 'correct' one - the many, sometimes Fallible Authors theory allows us all of them, the 'Venerable Recorders' version requires us to through most of them out.

There are two issues here that ought not to be conflated. First, there are contradictions between texts in which Tolkien simply changed his mind about the story and re-wrote it. Second, there are contradictions between texts that are purported to come from different 'scribes'. Clear examples of the first would be many places where Tolkien cancelled lines of a manuscript and replaced them with a new version. A clear example of the second would be the 'false story' in the first edition of The Hobbit.

I would argue that the varying versions of the Silmarillion primarily constitute a set of contradictory texts of the first class. There is no indication, for example, that when Tolkien wrote the 'Sketch of the Mythology' and its revisions (including the 'Quenta Silmarillion') he intended them to be merely a 'different tradition' than the Book of Lost Tales. On the contrary, all indications are that he intended the story told therein to replace that from the Book of Lost Tales. This is especially evident in the case of the 'Sketch', which was initially intended merely as a summary of the mythology contained in BoLT and was clearly not supposed to be an alternative tradition - and yet which tells a story that is different in many ways from BoLT.

There are cases where one can make a good case for two versions representing different traditions - perhaps the most obvious example from HoMe is 'The Drowning of Anadune'. But one cannot view all the vast complex of contradictory Silmarillion texts this way. Or rather, if one chooses to do so, that is a creative, "fan fictional" way of viewing things.