<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Pile o' Bones
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Re: Feanor,Turin and the Second Prophecy of Mandos
We have three different traditions:
*****1. That of the Quenta Silmarillion which ends with the story some tell of Morgoth sometimes surmounting the walls and then continues with the supposed second prophecy of Mandos.
*****2. That of the "Valaquenta" which denies any prophecy concerning amending the Marring of Arda. This statement at the end of the "Valaquenta" was moved by Christopher Tolkien to the end of the Quenta Silmarillion replacing tradition 1 above.
*****3. The tradition in "Myths Transformed" material, including "Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth", which speaks of Elvish estel 'hope, belief, faith' in some kind of healing of Arda or creation of a new Arda, speculates in "Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth" about what might happen, and identifies Quenta Silmarillion as a legendary document containing garbled traditions of Men, including the second prophecy of Mandos. "Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth" in particular is philosophical speculation, and so presented.
We do not have to bring a possibly spurious prophecy and Elvish speculation into agreement at all. The Second Prophecy of Mandos simply occurs at the end of a work called Quenta Silmarillion as in the versions Christopher Tolkien worked with. It might, as I suggested in a previous post, be better with a note indicating that this final detail is Númenorean tradition. But maybe not. The purpose of this project is generally to produce a Myths Untransformed version of the work, in which the Sun was created just before the wakening of Men, the planet Venus is actually a Númenorean ancestor in a ship, and the world was really flat before Númenor foundered.
Tradition 2 does not deny the Elvish beliefs or speculations of tradition 3, but points out they have, so the writer believes, no basis in any authentic revelation of Manwë, Varda, or Mandos. Finrod would probably agree. He knows the Ainulindalë through some sort of revelation from the Valar, but most of his beliefs and thoughts are from reason and pondering and general Elvish philosophy. That seems to be true in general of Elvish beliefs of this kind. Even the Valar did not know all, and about the ultimate fates of Children of Ilúvatar they seem to have known very little.
Note also, the actual discussion in the "Athrabeth" would have taken place long before the Second Prophecy of Mandos was proclaimed. So Finrod and Athrebeth would certainly not know it, even if it were a true prophecy. And it might be true, simply unknown to or disbelieved by the Elves responsible for traditions 2 and 3.
Rather oddly, in a endnote 17 to "The Problem of Ros" in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), a prophecy of the Last Battle and Túrin's return from the Dead is actually ascribed to Andreth herself, though she would have been dead long before Húrin's birth, much more Túrin's.
</p>Edited by: <A HREF=http://www.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_profile&u=00000212>jallanit e</A> at: 6/18/01 9:41:19 pm
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