Sorry about the lack of source Mithadan. And thanks Aiwendil! Also there is an *
error* in my quote above, as C should say:
Mixed Dunedanic tradition (not simply "mixed tradition")
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I don't think Tolkien felt up to the massive work of recasting the fundamental cosmology, in effect jacking up the house and replacing its foundation;...
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Perhaps. But I wonder if maybe he just didn't like the new ideas (as brief as they are, in a sense) as much as the old ones. Add that to the idea that the Silmarillion need not be "Elvish" as told to an Anglo-saxon upon Tol Eressea...
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... while the idea of a distorted Mannish version has appeal, it also has problems for whatever fictional theory of transmission Tolkien might have decided on. Bilbo's "Translations From the Elvish?" Bilbo had direct sources of information in Elrond, Glorfindel and sometimes Gandalf to set him straight.
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I've heard this before, but to my mind getting everything straight isn't the point. Bilbo is translating a particular work. He and Glorfindel might know about its inaccuracies, but that's no reason to alter a work of antiquity. Especially (I think) if one is a Hobbit! I don't find this problematic at all, especially given that the "truth" of the big questions will be in some part of Bilbo's translations, if not in others.
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Akallabeth written by Elendil? Elendil personally lived through it and would have known the form of the Old World.
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Well (in DA) upon learning that the world was like an apple, even the King of Numenor wanted to test the theory by sailing East, but he never got the chance. Moreover, we don't really have Tolkien drawing the final picture here for us: he could easily have stamped "mixed dunedanic tradition" on Akallabeth, instead of Elendil.
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Surviving Gondorian manuscripts? Don't fit especially well as a co-transmission with the memoirs of two Shire-hobbits. I'm not saying the problem was intractable, but Tolkien certainly never worked it out, and CT wisely kept silent.
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Granted you are not saying that the problem was intractible, but here again I find nothing very problematic about sources hailing from Gondor as well as Imladris.
I dunno, that seems natural enough to me.