Part of the mind of Ilúvatar

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I don't exactly agree with you here. Of course, I'm venturing into the theoretical world here, and therefore you can disagree back, but here's what I believe. Despite the name (Timeless Void), even that place has time. Maybe not in the same sense as we do, but time still passes. And here's why I think so:

Since it's really off topic, just a short clarification here When something is timeless, it is out of the time. We cannot imagine it with our human minds, but that changes nothing about the fact that it can "exist". (In these terms, even the words like "exist" become relative.) Ask the astrophysicists. It is perfectly plausible to imagine Valar coming into be before time, however the concept of "becoming" is closely connected to time in our thinking at least. Indeed, myself, I would say that once the creation comes into place, we have to be inside time. So Eru could be "outside the time", but at the moment of creation of the first Valar, the time would already have to exist (logically). That's what I would vote for, since that makes sense.

However, the mythos clearly states otherwise. So however I don't find it applying to my logic, if I want to keep true to the logic of the tale, I have to forget my logic. The creation of Valar happened before the time, that much is clear - time came into being when Eä was created. If we cannot imagine it, it is our problem So we just have to accept that somehow there was this creation before time, therefore every temporal expression used is a metaphore of the Elvish (and our) language in which the myth is written...