[Aiwendil]

Just a few thoughts for now - more will follow.

VT-LQ-01.5: The cosmology is a thorny problem. I tend to think that the project of explicitly defining the cosmology in our version (which is to say, the cosmology as envisioned in the early 1950s) is quite hopeless. It's a shame that there is no later version of the Ambarkanta; without one, I don't think we can build up a completely clear and coherent picture.

In AAm, Christopher Tolkien notes the following statements with cosmological implications:

§1 Ëa is 'the World that is'; the Valar are 'the Powers of Ëa'.
§11 After ages of labour 'in the great halls of Ëa the Valar descended into Arda in the beginning of its being'.
§13 Tulkas came to Arda 'out of distant regions of Ëa'.
§17 Melkor gathered spirits 'out of the voids of Ea.'; and he 'drew near again unto Arda, and looked down upon it'.
§18 The Valar did not perceive the dark shadow 'cast from afar by Melkor'.
§19 Melkor 'passed over the borders of Ëa' > 'passed over the Walls of the Night upon the borders of Arda' > 'passed over the Walls of the Night' (note 19).
§23 The Outer Sea 'encircled the kingdom of Arda, and beyond were the Walls of the Night'.

It seems then to me that the Walls of Night (or Walls of the World) enclose Arda, not Ea. §23 would suggest that we have Arda - Outer Sea - Walls of Night - other parts of Ea.

Christopher Tolkien's further discussion of the cosmology here has great bearing on our issue, especially:

Amid all the ambiguities (most especially, in the use of the word 'World'), the testimony seems to be that in these texts the Ambarkanta world-image survived at least in the conception of the Outer Sea extending to the Walls of the World, now called the Walls of the Night - though the Walls have come to be differently conceived (see also p. 135, §168). Now in the revision of 'The Silmarillion' made in 1951 the phrase in QS §12 (V.209) 'the Walls of the World fence out the Void and the Eldest Dark' - a phrase in perfect agreement of course with the Ambarkanta – was retained (p. 154). This is a central difficulty in relation to the Ainulindalë, where it is made as plain as could be wished that Ëa came into being in the Void, it was globed amid the Void (§§11, 20, and see pp. 37-8); how then can the Walls of Arda 'fence out the Void and the Eldest Darkness'?
A possible explanation, of a sort, may be hinted at in the words cited above from AAm §17: Melkor gathered spirits out of the voids of Ëa. It may be that, although AAm is not far distant in time from the last version (D) of the Ainulindalë, my father's conception did not in fact now accord entirely with what he had written there; that (as I suggested, p. 39) he was now thinking of Arda as being 'set within an indefinite vastness in which all "Creation" is comprehended', rather than of a bounded Ëa itself set 'amid the Void'. Then, beyond the Walls of the Night, the bounds of Arda, stretch 'the voids of Ëa'. But this suggestion does not, of course, clear up all the problems, ambiguities, and apparent contradictions in the cosmology of the later period, which have been discussed earlier.

So we have what may be shifting cosmological ideas between the various texts of this phase - but it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell what exactly those shifts are, since we have only isolated clues in the texts. However, it seems to me quite plausible that the central problem is merely one of nomenclature: 'void' could be used in two senses. There is the Void in the sense of that beyond Ea, the place or thing within which Ea is globed; and then there is the Void of Ea, the vast empty space in which Arda and the innumerable stars are set.

All this is to say that I don't necessarily see a contradiction between the LQ's "Void and Eldest Darkness" and the cosmology of the Ainulindale and AAm. Now, whether we might want to err on the side of caution and eliminate a possible contradiction is an open question, and one on which I haven't quite decided where I stand.

In any case, I do agree with Findegil that we have a redundancy here, and I also agree that we can include the part of a sentence that I skipped. So with the caveat that we may still want to think about changing "Void and Eldest Darkness", I agree with Findegil's suggestion here.

VT-EX-03b: I like Findegil's proposal.

VT-EX-03.1: I like using "Mountains of Aman" here. I'm just the tiniest bit uncertain about replacing the other "Valinor" here with "Aman" ("they towered mightily between Valinor and the world"), since the mountains are after all part of Aman. But this is only a slight imprecision, and maybe it doesn't matter.