Eldest?

[Boromir88]

Here's just some more food for thought. This appears in Hammond and Skull's- Lord of the Ring's Companion and is one of Tolkien's letter dated 1968:

Eldest was the courtesy title of Treebeard as the oldest surviving Ent. The Ents claimed to be the oldest 'speaking people' after the Elves {illegible} until taught the art of speech by the Elves...They were therefore placed after the dwarves in the Old List...since Dwarves had the power of speech from their awaking.

Farael, I am new to this forum (I joined 5 minutes ago), and I was EXTREMELY relieved to read your post.

About myself - I am into meditation and esoterics... internal martial arts etc...

Basically when I was young, I read LOTR and Silmarillion constantly. I'm not a big Hobbit fan, neither do I like the LOTR movies. Maybe that's just me...

Anyway, I read the Lord of The Rings constantly. More than 20 times. When I got my hands on Silmarillion, it changed things... I thought oh my God... this is the stuff... I just couldn't believe it. I must have read it even more times than LOTR, and it gave me a greater understanding and appreciation of LOTR too.

I've been doing martial arts for a long time, but in the past year have begun a heavy meditative journey and study into the esoteric, and once again I am fortunate enough to be able to see deeper and deeper into Tolkein's work... and appreciate his Mastery more and more.

I was hoping to find similar minded people here that can see the esoteric component of LOTR and Silmarillion, and Farael you've just confirmed to me that there are others out there!

Anyway, I hope to get to know all of you! This is a great forum.

[alatar]

In TTT Treebeard states that there are trees older than he, and so if Bombadil were present before trees...plus, Tom's obviously older as he dresses so flamboyantly and doesn't care.

Doesn't he also say that as he was First? On the other hand the man does ramble so, and so is suspect. Surely there will be a poll, but between the two I would prefer to hang out with Treebeard. He's more grounded and more active and easier to relate to.

[Thinlómien]

My sister happened to ask me today which of them was older.
"I think Tom Bombadil. Ents only awoke around the same time as Elves", I replied. She raised a good point saying: "That'd make good sense since Tom says: 'Tom was here before the trees'."

So, what do you 'downers think? There surely were no ents before there were any trees, so unless Tom is lying he's older than Treebeard in my logic.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

So, what do you 'downers think? There surely were no ents before there were any trees, so unless Tom is lying he's older than Treebeard in my logic.

Can we rule out that Tom was 'lying'? Just come across this. Some interesting points are made generally about lying, 'invention' & misinformation in M-e. Tom is not, perhaps, actually 'lying', but whether he's telling the whole truth about himself is another question. Even if he is telling what he believes to be the truth, can we entirely trust his words? Is Tom all that interested in straight 'facts'?