[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

Tolkien did indeed contribute to the Jerusalem Bible (not the New one, but the original one- in English). You'll find his name in the "credits". I would know... I've looked.

However, he considered his contribution quite small. I believe he only worked on the Book of Jonah, which is a mere four chapters long.



I've never read anywhere what Tolkien's views on Biblical translation were, but I think one can assume that they were fairly similar to his LotR ones, except possibly with regard to the treatment of names. He did, after all, feel that the English names of the Hobbits should remain unchanged in the translations, but I do not see him advocating "Christus" or "Cephas" or "Paulus" for the Biblical "Christ", "Peter", or "Paul".

Thanks for your reply, Formendacil. What I was wondering about is more Tolkien's thoughts on the authority of the translations. It pertains to the original question here--as much to LotR as to the Bible (not that The Professor ever claimed LotR was the word of God): how do we or where do we ground our interpretations? I seem to recall a letter of Tolkien's wherein he states his sense of how he was not creating the stories but discovering them. (I don't have the Letters to hand right now.) I wonder if it is worth while considering just what he meant?

btw, there's a bit on inspiration in Catholic Encyclopedia: The Inspiration of the Bible. I hadn't realized that, according to this article:

Originally Posted by CE

The belief in the sacred character of certain books is as old as the Hebrew literature. . . . The gospel contains no express declaration about the origin and value of the Scriptures, but in it we see that Jesus Christ used them in conformity with the general belief, i.e. as the Word of God.

It is one of those interesting studies of what aspects of the OT were taken up in the NT and what aspects left behind.

Originally Posted by SaucepanMan

although I am not sure that there really are "sides" as such, merely a collection of varying approaches, beliefs, attitudes)

And I want to say, in support of SpM's comment, that I also don't see a hard and fast "one side/t'other side" here, but a range of ways of looking at the question of how little or how closely or how much did Tolkien base his Legendarium on biblical events and when or why did he choose instead to incorporate northern mythologies. We have one answer in the point that Tokien felt there was some kind of family inheritance in dreaming about floods and another in Tolkien's comment that he wished to avoid the appearance of parody. Add to that the idea that a text should or ought to be or is best when it is sufficient unto itself, at least on a first experience of it.