[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

I'm not so sure. If we look at Jesus' words (John 6 52-58) we find ...
Mithras says 'No salvation unless & so does Jesus

They are indeed similar. I grant it. You have brought out one of the most mysterious passages of the Bible, one that I'm still uncertain how to understand. I could see it as metaphor, but I think Jesus is saying something more fundamental than that. To say it's a spiritual meaning is to say something too general, as the term needs to be qualified before real understanding can be had. I need to think and pray about this one more.

Originally Posted by alatar

I can understand when you say that life must live on the path set by an omniscient Creator, as what else can it do, but as 1/3 of the angels fell, as Adam and Eve fell, I question if God does not want at least some of His creations to take the road less travelled.

Eru was generous to Aule.

He was. Another passage worth considering is that of Abraham asked by God to sacrifice Isaace to him. It has to be one of the most heartwrenching and profound stories in the Bible. Abraham, a fallen sinner, believed God and obeyed. His obedience was richly rewarded.

Originally Posted by Lalaith

I always assumed the Maia who joined Melkor = Fall of the Angels.

Me too.

Originally Posted by Lalaith

Atlantis/Numenor, of course, but what about parallels between Numenor and the Flood? Even if we could accept that all humanity, even new born babies, were irredeemably evil, except for Noah and co, what about all the animals? Did they have moral sense and thus commit evil and deserve to die?

You know how to ask the hard questions. It's not understood from Scripture that animals had moral sense. My thought is that God saw the loss of the animals as tragic. It's an aspect that I don't understand as well as I would like to.

As to great floods on record or legend, there are reports that there are remains of civilization at the bottom of the Black Sea, suggesting that at one time it was an area that though below sea level, was dry .... until some kind of rather large disaster (which literally means 'undo-star') .... filled the basin with water. And then there is the legend of Broceliande, which it has been suggested was an actual forest that spanned from the edge of the Plain of Salisbury across the valley between, to modern day Brittany..... and is now under the waters of the English Channel. Both things suggest that the mean sea level may have at one time been much lower than it is in our own day. Pure speculation.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

There seem to me to be some direct parallels between the Tuatha De Danaan and the Elves.

In my reference to the Milesians earlier, that legend had it that the Milesians taught the folk, but over time hid themselves below ground and became known as the Tuatha De Danaan. I'm quite convinced that these are akin if not the same as Tolkien's Elves.

The story I read did have the Milesians coming from Spain. It was my awareness of the seaside city of Miletus that caused me to make the connection. For them to have come from Aegea by way of Spain seems not too great a reach.

You're quite right, Lalwendë, that it was the same impulse in Virgil as it was for the later writers to find cultural roots in Classical Greece. .... all of it quite untrue.

I too accept a God who is only good. However, I also understand that I am a mere human who can't comprehend the vastness of God's purposes, or I'd be God. I know that God is good and loves all of his creation; that's the basis for all my understanding. Whatever I don't understand, I admit it and try to learn based on what I already know. What I don't do is decide that God can't exist, or is cruel, or is evil, on the grounds that I can't understand how something evil fits into a good God's plan. That would be quite presumptuous of me.

Originally Posted by davem

...probably inspired by the Gilgamesh story

Unless it really happened.

Originally Posted by davem

the concept of an inherited 'dream'/fantasy ... not a Biblical one

Actually, this is quite biblical. God's words to Adam, Eve, and the serpent are resplendent with references to 'seed'. Our modern words are 'inheritance' and 'genetics'. Just as sinfulness passes down through genetics, so can mental capacities such as dreams.

Originally Posted by davem

Its as if he is deliberately avoiding Biblical parallels. If his theory that Myths are 'distor[t]ed' versions of Biblical Truth why would he do this?

Why not? I don't see that Tolkien's (assumed) understanding of myths as distorted versions of Bilbical truth, forces his hand to write everything imitatively of the Bible.

So the problem arises - if he was attempting to tell the 'real' Truth of the ancient past, is writing about a devastating flood which changed the whole world, why doesn't his account echo the Biblical account more precisely?

Again: why must it? One will find the true echoes not in the details, which one would hope are different, but in the themes.