[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I repeat my belief that the occasional bending of the Rules by the One is a reminder he is the only real "random" element in Arda.

Define what you mean by random. When one of Tolkien’s Hobbits, or one of Tolkien’s Elves, or even one of Tolkien’s Men flips a coin, does it not randomly come up heads or tails? Similarly with other events in Middle-earth that one would call random?

That you say only Tolkien’s Eru is really random in Tolkien’s universe suggests to me that random does not mean what you think it does. In Tolkien’s legends he does not present Eru as randomly deciding that Tuor’s fate should be or what should be done about the problem of Númenor?

Your reminder I find nonsense.

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

But in my interpretation, Arda was still flat originally, since the tale very much indicates that. I do not have any other indication elsewhere that would say "no, it wasn't". The tale has been twisted by tradition, but who can say in which aspects.

Yes, “the tale” indicates that. But is the tale true, within Tolkien’s writing on the first two ages of Middle-earth?

Tolkien writes in Morgoth’s Ring, “Myths Transformed”, I:

This descends from the oldest forms of the mythology – when it was still intended to be no more than another primitive mythology, though more coherent and less ‘savage’. It was consequently a ‘Flat Earth’ cosmogony (much easier to manage anyway): the Matter of Númenor had not been devised.

Later in the same discussion he writes:

At that point (in reconsideration of the early cosmogonic parts) I was inclined to adhere to the Flat Earth and the astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon. But you can make up stories of that kind when you live among people who have the same general background of imagination, when the Sun ‘really’ rises in the East and does down in the West, etc. When however (no matter how little most people know or think about astronomy) it is general belief that we live on a ‘spherical’ island in ‘Space’ you cannot do this any more.

There are two mentions you can’t find. And others follow. Not looking doesn’t make an argument.

Tolkien then starts work on a model for a new version of the Silmarillion material in which the World has always been round and is coeval with the Sun. But he finds this difficult to maintain and eventually abandons this as a fully told version. But the Silmarillion (and Akallabêth) is still to be explained as stories by Men in which until the downfall of Númenor the world was flat.

Interestingly Tolkien’s second version of “The Drowning of Anadúnë” (from Sauron Defeated [357–87]) tells the story from a Mannish point of view in which the world was always spherical.

Note 2 by Tolkien to his “Athrabeth Finrod Ah-Andeth” (in Morgoth’s Ring)is one example of Tolkien openly presenting a spherical world from the beginning. Tolkien remarks in this note:

Arda or ‘The Kingdom of Arda’ (as being directly under the kingship of Eru’s vice-regent Manwë) is not easy to translate, since neither ‘earth’ nor ‘world’ are entirely suitable. Physically Arda is what we should call the Solar System.¹¹ Presumably the Eldar could have had as much and as accurate information concerning this, its structure, origin, and its relation to the rest of Eä (the Universe) as they could comprehend.

…

The traditions here referred to have come down from the Eldar of the First Age, through Elves who never were directly acquainted with the Valar, and through Men who received ‘lore’ from the Elves, but who had myths and astronomical guesses of their own. There is nothing here that seriously conflicts with present human notions of the Solar System, and its size and position in the Universe.

In short, no Flat Earth in Elvish tradition. It’s just a story in his imagined Silmarillion in Tolkien’s fictional creation.

See also the beginning of “The Song of Durin” in the chapter “A Journey in the Dark” in The Fellowship of the Ring (emphasis mine):

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone,
When Durin woke and walked alone.

In Tolkien’s Silmarillion material of any date the Dwarves awake in Middle-earth long before the first rising of the Moon. Tolkien here is writing what he imagined really happened according to his outline in “Myths Transformed”.

So, it isn't that I prefer Inzil's interpretation to Tolkien's. What a blasphemy that would be! (Sorry, Zil ) It is that I prefer Inzil's interpretation of Tolkien to your interpretation of Tolkien.

You don’t mention my interpretation of Tuor being given an Elvish lifespan. Presumably then you actually accept one of my two rejections of Inziladun’s supposed proofs of Eru’s omnipotence. I have more fully indicated why I believe Tolkien’s own writings about his works, writing which you appear to have forgotten about or have not read. Thus, yes, by your words you blaspheme. Note I don’t use the word blasphemy. You do. I think that word is quite unfitting. Tolkien isn’t a God and blasphemy does not mean what you seem to think it does.

Your interpretation does not convince me at all when it entirely ignores Tolkien’s texts which conflict with it, texts which make a distinction between the supposed preserved Mannish Silmarillion and what really happened.

Tolkien himself indicates some of what aspects chiefly bothered him, the flat earth aspect. He says so plainly.

In The War of the Jewels, “Part III: The Wanderings of Húrin”, “IV: Of the Ents and the Eagles”, Christopher Tolkien remarks:

In Yavanna’s following words beginning ‘I lifted up the branches of great trees …’ B has ‘and some sang to Eru amid the wind and the rain and the glitter of the Sun’; the last words were omitted by S on account of the implication that the Sun existed from the beginning of Arda.

From this which I have cited and from other passages it is plain to me that Tolkien intended his Silmarillion to be legends of the First Age as distorted by Men.