The Emblems of Religion don't belong ... or do they?

[davem]

Thinking about it, doesn't LotR start to become more & more loaded with 'symbolism' from this point on? Mordor is depicted as Hell on earth, with, at its heart, a place of supernatural fire, Minas Tirith is referred to in terms which make it seem a physical 'echo' of the Heavenly City, the Eagle's song, as Shippey has pointed out bears striking similarities to the psalms of the King James Bible both in style & wording - 'Sing ye people of the Tower of Guard...The Black Gate is thrown down, & your King has passed through & he is victorious. And he shall come again & dwell among you all the days of your lives'...etc. We also have (Shippey again) the fact that the Fall of Sauron takes place on March 25th - the old date of Easter, etc, etc. Not to mention Frodo's passing into the West, which may or may not symbolise his death, depending on how you choose to read it....

It may be significant that this 'turn' in the narrative takes place after the encounter with Faramir - in fact it could be argued that this 'turn' occurs at the moment in Henneth Annun where the Rangers turn to face West before eating. Something is 'invoked' there which seems to become active in the story, which take an increasingly symbolic turn from then on, moving away from the 'pagan' to the 'Christian', from 'myth' to 'Religion'. Its almost like we experience 'Incarnation' from this point, as things which up to this point have been merely history & legend become real & present. Sam's discussion of Story seems to refer to this, when he talks about the Star Glass containing the Light of the Silmaril borne by Earendel. We've gone from 'myth' to 'reality' all of a sudden. The 'Holy' Light of the Silmaril, the Light of the Two Trees, suddenly blazes forth in fact from the hand of Frodo the Hobbit. He holds forth the Light of the Trees in the Darkness of Cirith Ungol, & once again we're back to 'primary world' religious emblems - 'The Light Shines in the Darkness, & the Darkness has not overcome it.'

Yet, if Middle-earth was this world in ancient times, & if, as Tolkien believed, Christianity is True, why would such things not be present in some form in Middle-earth? What I'm getting at is, the forms, the 'outward signs' of Religion certainly do not belong in Faerie (or in the historical period before they came into being) but the 'facts' those forms & emblems refer to, if they are True must exist there, if Faerie itself is at all True.

(Davem takes refuge in his sig, in case he's just contradicted himself....)

[littlemanpoet]

The Eagles' words being reminiscent of King James English may have more to do with the state of early 17th century English than biblicality of language; I wonder what the Psalms would sound like if they were translated verbatim from Davidic Hebrew to modern English, or to King James English?

In Letter #210, Tolkien critiques the abortive Zimmerman screenplay of the late 50's. One interesting statement made by Tolkien in this context is:

In the book lembas has two functions. It is a 'machine' or device for making credible the long marches with little provision, in a world which as I have said 'miles are miles'. But that is realtively unimportant. It also has a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a 'religious' kind (my bold). This becomes later apparent, especially in the chapter 'Mount Doom' (III 213 and subsequently.

There is a footnote to 'III 213', which runs like so:

The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die ...... It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyondn the measure of mortal kind.

The word "religious" is used in the first quote, and perhaps explained in the second. Is lembas a religious emblem, or not?

I especially appreciate the reference to "veiled", as one or more of you have used it, for our discussion has served to reveal to me that emblems of religion (Catholic and ancient mythic) seem to be scattered all over LotR, but veiled. Which raises my original question perhaps in a fresh way. Is it perhaps a matter of craft rather than either/or?

[alatar]

Great posts all - too much to take in.

Originally Posted by davem

Yet, if Middle-earth was this world in ancient times, & if, as Tolkien believed, Christianity is True, why would such things not be present in some form in Middle-earth? What I'm getting at is, the forms, the 'outward signs' of Religion certainly do not belong in Faerie (or in the historical period before they came into being) but the 'facts' those forms & emblems refer to, if they are True must exist there, if Faerie itself is at all True.

One way to 'fit' the ME history with our own plus stay consistent with Christianity, one can set the Fourth Age in BCE then assume that the ME history has been blurred a bit during repeated transcriptions. As assumedly the events in ME did not happen in the Middle East (but in Europe?), then Biblical references to the crowning of Aragorn, Gondor, Elves etc can be easily be accounted for as these weren't part of the 'world' at that time. For example, does the Bible refer to events in China?

And reading the various posts made me see a similarity between the ME and Christian Bible history. In each, one goes from an ancient time of worldy Paradise to a more modern age where miracles (meaning what we would consider to be miracles) are less common, human lives are shortened and intervention by the Divine is more subtle if existent. Knowledge, meaning the kind that would seem divine in nature, is also decreasing - one does not see anyone building Orthanc or making Palantiri in the Third Age.

Evil too is in a slide, becoming more human in form as time passes.

I would say, from a naturalistic pov, that the reverse has taken place in our reality/world. Surely there were golden ages in the past, but we now live longer, have more technology and knowledge (but not wisdom ). One thing is the same though; the intervention of the Divine is less apparent than in the past.

And a few post scripts:

Males are XY and females are XX (with a few exceptions, of course). I'm a skeptic (it's my religion). And I believe in genetic predisposition, not genetic predeterminism, meaning that most things aren't 'on/off' but are a spectrum ( a 'normal' bell curve) where one can have a greater or lesser predisposition to a trait.