Quote:
Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar
I disagree with this definition; resurrected bodies, in the Christian usage of the word, with which Tolkien would be most familiar, are not the identical, original bodies but are a special kind, same in appearance, but differing in their material, perhaps? This accounts for the ability to disappear into the spiritual realm after resurrection.
This concept seems to me to apply to resurrected Elves and Gandalf (and, as a human exception, Beren); I tend to agree with those who consider the Barrow situation as something completely different: a kind of inhabitance, something like possession.
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Exactly (for both).
I think the concept is rather:
Resurrection - a dead person is brought back to life again, but in a different quality (absolutely perfect example: Gandalf. Parallel: [Judeo]-Christian term of resurrection)
Reincarnation - in the sense of rebirth: the same person is born again anew in a new body - similar to the former, but a new one still - as a baby (typical example: Dwarven belief of all the Durins returning - I guess they were reborn as babies, or it seems so logically from the narration in the Appendices: it was not so that a fully grown Durin VII. would all of a sudden appear among people. Parallel: Hindu term of reincarnation)
The Barrow scene was really, in my opinion, something like possession, just as
Esty said: Merry's memories got sort of mixed with the thoughts of the spirit.
As for why it was Merry who was so prone to all these things, he always stroke me as the most "deep" of all the Hobbits, in the sense of "having close to the metaphysical" - well, of course, with the exception of Frodo - but Merry was the one who kept meeting the Nazgul all the time (in Bree, on Pelennor) and generally being the most "thoughtful", or so it seemed to me. So why not him...