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Originally Posted by Morthoron
I don't think William implied that only people with authority should comment; however, he is completely correct in what he is saying and offers research to back it up. That is how debates are won.
Simply put, the One Ring of The Lord of the Rings was not originally the ring Bilbo bore in The Hobbit, and the idea by Tolkien to incorporate that plot point into the story came well after the original publication of The Hobbit. Please reread William's post for the particulars.
But one doesn't even need to go to outlandish lengths and provide copious amounts of documentation to know this. All one has to do is read the first edition of The Hobbit to know that, after the riddle game, Gollum simply hands the magic ring to Bilbo as a reward for winning. This, of course, would not be physically possible for Gollum if it were the malignant One Ring he had held for centuries. Tolkien did not change that aspect of the story until he rewrote The Hobbit to align with the plot of Lord of the Rings.
If you have no conclusive citations that state otherwise, the debate is over, nothing more to see here, move on.
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Actually, this post presumes authority in quite a different way. It presumes that the extant texts, published as is, do not have citations of worth.
I think you'll find materials in post with -- references -- not direct citations to position an argument. I don't think there is a singular capacity for anyone to presume correctness on any given topic
Certainly not on this topic, where, it is quite clear that the author's materials evolved as he wrote, in such a liquid fashion that pinning down a simple topic with a 'one size fits all' argument speaks more to the need of the poster, rather than the reality.
I'm afraid that after about 30 years of consideration to canon and other material I've grown increasingly diverse in sense of options for argument. Which is why I'm suspicious of posts that presume 'correctness'. It's more about a need of order in one's mind and to slot things away in a known set of parameters.
There's no such thing in Tolkien's works. He was evolving ideas to the day he died.