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Old 06-07-2018, 02:34 PM   #6
Legate of Amon Lanc
A Voice That Gainsayeth
 
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From what I have read above, nothing seems to me like Tolkien could not have seen the "old" stories (=Genesis etc.) as metaphors, in the same sense many modern (=including in his time) Christians/Catholics see them. The Letter 96 quoted above seems to me would make perfect sense exactly in such a case.

I mean, the idea is, most people don't really think about it unless you intentionally push them into answering a specific question, like: "So were the seven days of creation literal or not?" But majority of believers would not think about it. Both Genesis and the fact that somebody dug up a 65 million year old dinosaur can be true at the same time. Because for example the biblical account doesn't really operate with such cathegories. The Bible is not interested in knowing, or asking you, how many years has it been since the Flood. Its core is in something else, it revolves around the following of God and shows the recordings of other people who followed God in their time, they are now the witnesses for those who read it, who can see themselves as parts of the same story (I am sure Tolkien would have liked that metaphore).

So I really don't think Tolkien would have felt the need to create any "either-or" picture in his head. The whole misconception that "science" and "religion" are in some way mutually exclusive comes in large part from modern positivist thinking and everything that followed from there. Which, sure, was up and running still in Tolkien's times. But a massive amount of Catholics also at the time - even Catholic priests - were also scientists, including people who made big work in biology, geology, astronomy... all the while when operating not under the "creationist" paradigm (in the sense of the word as it's mostly used now: literal creation in 7 days etc), but under the paradigm of the science at their time.

The letter 96 quoted above seems to me like showing that Tolkien took Genesis, most of all, as a story. Yes, Gospels are so close to the time of the events they describe that even the geographic details etc we can take as "historical truths"; we can't say the same about the rest. At the same time, if Tolkien imagined Eden as "real" - sure, but such an Eden could have been in Africa a few million years ago, for all practical purposes. The main point is that it doesn't matter where, what matters is that the story is fundamentally true: not in its geographic or chronological cathegories, but it is true always, throughout the history, it is true now, it is true about Tolkien's generation, it is true about current generation. And so on. That's what "myth" is.
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories
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