Of Men

[Findegil]

Sorry, Arvegil145, I lost your line of thought. What is you intention in this case? Or more concrete, what is your proposed change to our text?

Respectfully
Findegil

[Arvegil145]

Originally Posted by Findegil

Sorry, Arvegil145, I lost your line of thought. What is you intention in this case? Or more concrete, what is your proposed change to our text?

Respectfully
Findegil

I'm proposing that we keep Nuin's awakening of Ermon and Elmir, as well as Nuin's teaching of language to Men, etc. - basically, almost everything that's been cut out from 'Gilfanon's Tale'.

And since the ancient history of Men is murky at best (obviously), I don't see any problems with us keeping multiple different accounts of their ancestral past (ala the Tale of Adanel).

Moreover, I don't even see too much contradiction between these accounts, as per my previous reply - but that doesn't actually matter IMO.



Tl;dr - when it comes to origins of Men, I have zero problems with including multiple contradictory accounts (even though I believe they're not as contradictory as they appear to be).

[Findegil]

Here is the passage from the Athrabeth does for me denie an early contact of ELves or Aniur with Men:

'This lore takes no account of you,' said Andreth, 'for we knew nothing of the Eldar. We considered only dying and not-dying. Of life as long as the world but no longer we had not heard; indeed not until now has it entered my mind.'
'To speak truly,' said Finrod, 'I had thought that this belief of yours, that ye too were not made for death, was but a dream of your pride, bred in envy of the Quendi, to equal or surpass them. Not so, you will say. Yet long ere ye came to this land, ye met other folk of the Quendi, and by some were befriended. Were ye not then already mortal? And did ye never speak with them concerning life and death? Though without any words they would soon discover your mortality, and ere long you would perceive that they did not die.'
'"Not so" I say indeed,' answered Andreth. 'We may have been mortal when first we met the Elves far away, or maybe we were not: our lore does not say, or at least none that I have learned. But already we had our lore, and needed none from the Elves: we knew that in our beginning we had been born never to die. And by that, my lord, we meant: born to life everlasting, without any shadow of any end.'

Andreth speaks here was a sureness not shown in many passages: When Men first meet Elves they had already gained 'their lore' about thier true nature in thier beginning. To develop such a 'lore' you need speech. Therefore Nuin as father of speech is impossible.

Anyhow, to take Nuin as one of the messangers sent by Eru himself from the NoME text would in itself deny that he would wake Ermon and Elmir before the appointed time.

To take anything from Gilfanos Tale is a stretch in itself. I think we have gone that way as far as we can.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Arvegil145]

Originally Posted by Findegil

Here is the passage from the Athrabeth does for me denie an early contact of ELves or Aniur with Men:Andreth speaks here was a sureness not shown in many passages: When Men first meet Elves they had already gained 'their lore' about thier true nature in thier beginning. To develop such a 'lore' you need speech. Therefore Nuin as father of speech is impossible.

Anyhow, to take Nuin as one of the messangers sent by Eru himself from the NoME text would in itself deny that he would wake Ermon and Elmir before the appointed time.

To take anything from Gilfanos Tale is a stretch in itself. I think we have gone that way as far as we can.

Respectfully
Findegil

I guess you can look at Nuin's awakening of Ermon and Elmir as an act of 'providence' in itself - especially since the Elves were according to Iluvatar's original plan meant to stay in Middle-earth and serve as the mentors to Men.

And as to the passage about Eru's 'messengers to Men' in the NoME, I suppose Tu serves that function better than Nuin.

But as to your reference to the Athrabeth: one thing I always took from the discussion between Finrod and Andreth, and Andreth's recital of the Tale of Adanel, is that Men seem to be profoundly clueless as to their original nature (for one), and even the Edain still hold beliefs marred by Melkor's influence.

Which is why I'm so liberal about the inclusions from the Gilfanon's Tale: all of the myths/legends/rumors about Men's early days are (and should be!) a giant mess of garbled, corrupted, and contradictory accounts.

[Findegil]

I don't see that we will find common ground here, between the two of us. I would like to hear some other voices.

respectfully
Findegil

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Findegil

I don't see that we will find common ground here, between the two of us. I would like to hear some other voices.

respectfully
Findegil

I haven't even looked at this chapter yet. I do honestly feel that proceeding in an orderly way and focusing on one chapter at a time has served us better than trying to work on everything simultaneously, but perhaps that's just me. (And I do realize that my slowness and absence hasn't helped.)

However, I will jump in to say that I am against taking up this material from "Gilfanon's Tale". Not only because of the "Tale of Adanel", but because Tolkien very clearly seems to have decided, post-LT, that the earliest history of Men should not be directly depicted, and should be left ambiguous. Gilfanon's Tale is the tale of the Fall, which Tolkien later explicitly said (in Letter 131) does not appear in his Legendarium:

The first fall of Man, for reasons explained, nowhere appears – Men do not come on the stage until all that is long past, and there is only a rumour that for a while they fell under the domination of the Enemy and that some repented

[Findegil]

This come not unexpected. And I agree, that might make more sense concentrat on one chapter at a time, if time is sparce as it seems to be in your case.

Respectfully
Findegil