Yes, that is also more or less how I think the things probably stand. The doubt I expressed in my previous post was not so much intended to suggest that this thesis is incorrect as it was intended to point out that, even if it is most likely correct, there remains some room for alternative interpretations. I think you are
probably quite correct about how DA, the Akallabeth, and the cosmological issue are related; I just wouldn't go so far as to say you are
certainly correct.
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Originally Posted by Galin
And what if the reader should think that the author of DA is incorrect on this point? Would this not raise the question of what the Elves 'actually' taught, beneath the confusion? It can hardly be that they really taught that the World was flat -- and in that case, the Men who disbelieved the (mis-reported) teaching would essentially be correct! I find that a bit too convoluted: that early Men (or certain Men) did not believe that the World was round, but the author of DA (a later Man) ultimately knows that the Elves were correct -- all within the idea that the World being round was actually incorrectly reported to begin with!?
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The hypothetical scenario I had in mind was more along the following lines. Suppose that the Elvish tradition with respect to the shape of the Earth was that expressed in FN and Akallabeth - that is, an originally flat world made round at the time of the Cataclysm. But at some point, a Mannish tradition arises to the effect that the world is and always has been flat. This is the view held by the author of DA. Now suppose that the author of DA is aware that the Elves (and the Dunedain) have a different tradition from his own concerning the shape of the world - but that he misconstrues what that tradition is. Knowing that the Elves (or Dunedain) of his day claim that, contrary to his own belief, the world is round, he naturally assumes that they hold that the world was
always round (just as he holds that it was always flat), and therefore in DA he ascribes to the Elves of Second Age the view that he believes they would have had.
This scenario was, in fact, the one I envisioned when I first read DA years ago - and indeed, I think it's probably the natural thing to think if one has not yet read
Morgoth's Ring and is used to thinking of the Akallabeth as the 'true' story. I now think it's probably wrong (that is to say, I think it's not likely that Tolkien had such an idea in mind), but I still think it's at least a plausible story.