The Lord of the Bible?

[Boromir88]

I also think ''borrowed'' might have been a better word than ''steal'' for the original thread question.

I don't think either word works out well. Tolkien didn't write a story to mimic or be similar to the Bible. The Bible, and his religion, plus his many interests of studies (Beowulf, Egyptian mythology, Anglo-Saxon...etc) all influenced his writing. But, he did not a write a book to mimic anything, he was creating his own story, his own world, with it's own unique history.

Anyone can find allegories, or references to past cultures all throughout Lord of the Rings (but you can also do this through any book, movie, piece of literature if you're looking for it). Gurthang provides a link to a good thread, there is nothing original anymore, everything that can be written has been written. And authors will either intentionally or unconsciously write about stories, histories, cultures, and what influenced them. But what's important to always remember is that most of the time a good author can successfully create a new world, or a new story, by drawing off of what influenced him or her.

It's perfectly reasonable to find similarities and allegories (Tolkien even chimed in with his own at times), but it's the individuality and the freedom of the reader that shouldn't be taken away, by forcing an accepted view that Elrond=Jesus, the Lord of the Rings was written as a 'Biblical book.' And considering that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis' friendship pretty much ended because Tolkien criticized Lewis for writing too much of 'his religion' in the Chronicles of Narnia...I doubt Tolkien was doing the same with LOTR. There were some other reasons that caused strain between the two, but pretty much C.S. Lewis didn't like Tolkien criticizing his books because it had too much of the religious element.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Tolkien didn't write a story to mimic or be similar to the Bible.

I see a huge difference between borrowing character types and borrowing storylines. Having a Jesus character is not the same as having a Bible story.

Originally Posted by Lommy

That's dangerous; it that prevents us from seeing that there are other perspectives.

Equally dangerous to free thinking is to say "Elrond is Elrond and should only be seen as Elrond. No outside connections, coincidental or not, should be considered, even if only for amusement."

Originally Posted by Beth

The problem with this kind of linking is how to distinguish which are the most likely and the most unlikely and what principles to use in making the associations.

The problem with that idea is saying that I should be concerned with logic when making associations.

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

I see a huge difference between borrowing character types and borrowing storylines. Having a Jesus character is not the same as having a Bible story.

Equally dangerous to free thinking is to say "Elrond is Elrond and should only be seen as Elrond. No outside connections, coincidental or not, should be considered, even if only for amusement."


The problem with that idea is saying that I should be concerned with logic when making associations.

I agree with the above statements. On many occasions there is no clear definitive answer, so ridiculing one notion is far worse as suggesting one.
If Tolkein never read the Bible, would you think The Lord of the Rings to be anything like as comparable to the Bible?

[davem]

This is all about applicability. If you see Elrond or Gandalf as a Christ figures I have no problem. I you tell me they are Christ figures I will argue. Just as if you say that to you LotR is an allegory of WWII I don't have a problem. If you say that Tolkien wrote LotR as an allegory of WWII I will feel obliged to show you that you are wrong.

Originally Posted by davem

This is all about applicability. If you see Elrond or Gandalf as a Christ figures I have no problem. I you tell me they are Christ figures I will argue. Just as if you say that to you LotR is an allegory of WWII I don't have a problem. If you say that Tolkien wrote LotR as an allegory of WWII I will feel obliged to show you that you are wrong.

Knowbody is really saying that so & so are Christ figures etc. More to the truth is that some characters do have a Christ-like aura about them, so one may be entitled to question whether Tolkien was heavily influenced by characters in the Bible in is works. I for one believe that were it not for his experiences of the World Wars, as well as his interest in Christianity, the LOTR would not have been as it is today. It is possible that he may just have ended up with a longer but comparable tale to The Hobbit.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mansun

Knowbody is really saying that so & so are Christ figures etc. More to the truth is that some characters do have a Christ-like aura about them, so one may be entitled to question whether Tolkien was heavily influenced by characters in the Bible in is works.

They don't have a 'Christ-like aura' about them for me as I'm not a Christian. For me they are who they are, & are not 'in service' of any other person, real or imagined.

I for one believe that were it not for his experiences of the World Wars, as well as his interest in Christianity, the LOTR would not have been as it is today. It is possible that he may just have ended up with a longer but comparable tale to The Hobbit.

Its a truism that a writer's experiences will shape the kind of tale he tells. I'm not even sure that he woulld have written TH as he did (particularly the Battle of Five Armies) were it not for his wartime experiences - or his trip to Switzerland come to that. However, none of that is evidence of any conscious 'allegorical' element in any of his works.

It could be argued there's as much (if not more) of Odin in Gandalf as Christ, & a reader with a knowledge of Norse myth who was completely unaware of Christianity would possibly see Gandalf as having an' Odin-like aura'. Or one who read LotR first & then came to Christianity would possibly argue that Christ had a 'Gandalf-like aura'. All of which gets us precisely nowhere it seems to me.

LotR works because the Secondary World of Middle-earth is self contained, & has no dependence on primary world myth, religion or history.

As I said, if you want to see Gandalf (or Elrond or Aragorn or Frodo) as a 'Christ' figure, an 'Odin' figure, or a 'Mickey Mouse' figure I couldn't care less. If, on the other hand, you tell me they are that in their essence, I'll tell you you need to get some perspective.

Originally Posted by davem

As I said, if you want to see Gandalf (or Elrond or Aragorn or Frodo) as a 'Christ' figure, an 'Odin' figure, or a 'Mickey Mouse' figure I couldn't care less. If, on the other hand, you tell me they are that in their essence, I'll tell you you need to get some perspective.

If you couldn't careless, congratulations. You have managed to send lengthy replies even though you didn't careless. Likening characters & past events to the LOTR is all about opinions, where often there is no definitive answer. If there was, then there would be no point in most threads on this website existing. Most of Tolkien's work appears to show ambiguity in order to stimulate interest.

[Macalaure]

I start to get the feeling we're all talking past each other.

Originally Posted by Mansun

More to the truth is that some characters do have a Christ-like aura about them, so one may be entitled to question whether Tolkien was heavily influenced by characters in the Bible in is works.

What exactly do you mean by 'Christ-like aura'. I can't do much with this term.
As many have stated, Tolkien was a Christian and thus of course not only influenced by the characters of the bible, but by the bible itself and its mediated values and ethics (not that these are unambiguous). Surely you can find traces of it in LotR and Silmarillion. The question is: are these traces intentional refers to the bible or just came about because their writer was a faithful Christian? Given Tolkien's dislike for allegory, I think we can rule this out.

Of all the Good free folk in Middle-Earth, Elrond to my mind represents Good better than anyone else (save Gandalf the White perhaps).

Just a few more examples as to why I think of Elrond as a Christ-like figure. He is a master of healing, & has command of nature in his valley. One might almost say, he can perform miracles to an extent. He is also a true symbol for Good in Middle-Earth, lord of the elves.

Whether Elrond or Gandalf are the best representatives for Good in the LotR is debatable, but okay.
But I don't think that being a symbol for Good alone qualifies for making a character Christ-like. Though I don't believe in him, Jesus to me represents a very specific kind of good: the Redeemer, mainly. This is a quality I don't see in Elrond at all, and only to a very small extend in Mithrandir (Frodo comes closest, to me). Many of the good characters in LotR have one or the other similarity to Jesus (Legolas did walk on water on Caradhras, didn't he? ), naturally, because the idea of Good that Tolkien had based itself on his Christian belief. But a copy of Jesus, or any other bible character, does not exist in the book.

I for one believe that were it not for his experiences of the World Wars, as well as his interest in Christianity, the LOTR would not have been as it is today. It is possible that he may just have ended up with a longer but comparable tale to The Hobbit.

Your first statement is self-evident, of course. But the second, well, that is a big may in there. I guess that by 'comparable to The Hobbit' you mean: worse. This is pretty unanswerable. It would have been different, of course. Who can say for sure it wouldn't have been better?

Likening characters & past events to the LOTR is all about opinions, where often there is no definitive answer. If there was, then there would be no point in most threads on this website existing. Most of Tolkien's work appears to show ambiguity in order to stimulate interest.

I resolutely disagree. An endless exchange of opinions without goal is pointless and boring, in my mind. There might not be a definitive answer, but that shouldn't keep us from searching for one. We can at least always discard opinions which are faulty.
(I'm not suggesting yours in this thread is by this)

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Originally Posted by Mansun

I for one believe that were it not for his experiences of the World Wars, as well as his interest in Christianity, the LOTR would not have been as it is today.

I think Tolkien says in the forward to The Lord of the Rings, something along the lines of

Originally Posted by The Professor

"An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous."

Elsewhere in the forward he explains how the story would have differed if it had been an allegory of the world wars. Also, I am of the opinion that, as a Christian, it is very difficult to leave God or anything there related, out of a work so vast and involving so much of a 'creation'. I cannot, of course, speak for Tolkien, but only from my own experiences in story writing that lead me onto that train of through.

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

Equally dangerous to free thinking is to say "Elrond is Elrond and should only be seen as Elrond. No outside connections, coincidental or not, should be considered, even if only for amusement."

Of course. (Hopefully I never denied that.) In my opinion, one can make allegories, but they shouldn't be taken as a truth.
I very much agree with davem here:

This is all about applicability. If you see Elrond or Gandalf as a Christ figures I have no problem. I you tell me they are Christ figures I will argue. Just as if you say that to you LotR is an allegory of WWII I don't have a problem. If you say that Tolkien wrote LotR as an allegory of WWII I will feel obliged to show you that you are wrong.

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

I see a huge difference between borrowing character types and borrowing storylines. Having a Jesus character is not the same as having a Bible story.

Equally dangerous to free thinking is to say "Elrond is Elrond and should only be seen as Elrond. No outside connections, coincidental or not, should be considered, even if only for amusement."


The problem with that idea is saying that I should be concerned with logic when making associations.

I think I learn't a lot from this reply above from Feanor of the Peredhil earlier. My views are exactly the same. If ideas are not allowed to be entertained, then the thread will not be of interest to some, & vice versa.

[Boromir88]

Mansun, if it felt like anyone was ridiculing your opinion I apologize for myself, and the rest, because I'm sure that was not anyone's intent.

I've just been trying to get across davem's point. It isn't the "Lord of the Bible," it isn't "Beowulf of the Rings," it is The Lord of the Ring's, a story of it's own. If you find similarities that's good, but I got the impression that you were saying Tolkien stole and/or borrowed from the Bible. Where I'm disagreeing because someone can certainly not see anything biblical related to the Lord of the Rings, and still be just as 'right' as someone who does.

Equally dangerous to free thinking is to say "Elrond is Elrond and should only be seen as Elrond. No outside connections, coincidental or not, should be considered, even if only for amusement."

Fea, you have been saying some wise and truly cogent remarks but this time I'm going to actually have to disagree with you. If someone has no desire to make connections to the 'real' life, or the 'real history,' that's perfectly up to them. If they only look at Elrond as Elrond of Lord of the Rings, I don't see how that is 'dangerous to free thinking.' It makes me wonder how boring this person's life is that he/she couldn't possibly have found a 'connection,' but it's not dangerous to how anyone else thinks of Elrond.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

If someone has no desire to make connections to the 'real' life, or the 'real history,' that's perfectly up to them.

I'll certainly agree with that. Far be it for me to force a connection no matter what the context. My only point is that if people really have no interest in making the connections, why haunt this thread at all? It seems a disappointing waste of time and energy, as well as a rather negative activity for all involved.

I think it would be a brilliantly fun exercise to explore the literature Tolkien might have drawn from, Bible included. Not the well known ideas that influenced his story, but the underlying inspiration. When I have more time, and that's a thought that makes me laugh sadly, I think it would a terribly exciting study to make. Literature as a form of psychosociology. How the human mind works as an individual entity and in group situations; how society influences art, as well as art's influence on society. Surely I can't be the only person with a distinct fascination pertaining to the study of ideas with very little practical value?

It's an interesting experience to see the connections that minds make, both author and reader. Why quash them? I'd rather cosset them, cuddle them, perhaps even nuzzle them, and take notes to see what they grow into.

Originally Posted by davem

All of which gets us precisely nowhere it seems to me.

When you travel, do you always find the quickest route from beginning to end? Do you never drive roads upon which you've never been, simply to see where they go and enjoy the brand new view? Do you never take a walk and think "Maybe today I'll turn left, instead of right, just because I can."? No lovingly pointless meandering for the sheer sake of not having to be anywhere?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

I think it would be a brilliantly fun exercise to explore the literature Tolkien might have drawn from, Bible included. Not the well known ideas that influenced his story, but the underlying inspiration. When I have more time, and that's a thought that makes me laugh sadly, I think it would a terribly exciting study to make. Literature as a form of psychosociology. How the human mind works as an individual entity and in group situations; how society influences art, as well as art's influence on society. Surely I can't be the only person with a distinct fascination pertaining to the study of ideas with very little practical value?

Possibly. Yet Tolkien warns against dismantling the Tower to see where the stones of which it is built originally came from. The Tower was built so that its builder could climb to the top & look out on the Sea.

There are two approaches to such things: where it came from & what it was built for. It seems to me that Tolkien's purpose was not to construct a puzzle to be fathomed out, but a work of Art (or if you prefer a story) principally intended to move the reader, to entertain him or her.

I can play this game of sources & inspirations well enough - I did it for much of the CbC read through, but found that by the end I had not really gotten very far or gained very much. Increasingly I don't see any value in it. If others do then that's fine for them, & I have no desire to stop them doing that. However I do see the danger that this process of dismantling the story to find out how it came to be will leave you only with a pile of old stones & deprived of sight of the Sea.

But each to their own...

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by davem

There are two approaches to such things: where it came from & what it was built for. It seems to me that Tolkien's purpose was not to construct a puzzle to be fathomed out, but a work of Art (or if you prefer a story) principally intended to move the reader, to entertain him or her.

Exactly! Thanks Davem. You put it much more nicely than I as I tried to make the same point.

A work of art / literature can't be analysed into pieces that would convey the exactly same meaning. Happily so.

To re-write the old phrase: a whole is more than the sum of it's parts, and a work of art is more than the ingredients even the author thought consciously of...