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Old 12-08-2017, 08:41 AM   #1
Balfrog
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Thirty silver pennies in a fundamentally religious and Catholic work

The third part of Ms. Seth's series: 'Angel and Demon, Gospel and Fairy-story' is now released.


https://priyasethtolkienfan.wordpres...fairy-story-3/


It focuses on Christian symbolism she claims is present in the chapters including Bombadil as well as peripheral ones. What is emphasized is Tolkien's technique. One or two of the religious ideas she presents - I've seen over the years very briefly touched upon. In summarizing and high-lighting eight different examples – one might conclude there's something to it all. The Judas Iscariot and 30 silver pieces analogy certainly seems hard to summarily dismiss.
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Old 01-11-2018, 11:41 PM   #2
Saurondil
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Thirty silver pennies in a fundamentally religious and Catholic work

Quote:
Originally Posted by Balfrog View Post
The third part of Ms. Seth's series: 'Angel and Demon, Gospel and Fairy-story' is now released.
https://priyasethtolkienfan.wordpres...fairy-story-3/


It focuses on Christian symbolism she claims is present in the chapters including Bombadil as well as peripheral ones. What is emphasized is Tolkien's technique. One or two of the religious ideas she presents - I've seen over the years very briefly touched upon. In summarizing and high-lighting eight different examples – one might conclude there's something to it all. The Judas Iscariot and 30 silver pieces analogy certainly seems hard to summarily dismiss.
Seems to me either too far-fetched, or mistaking the things of common life for specifically Christian allusions. It seems to me that the thirty silver pennies are mentioned for their value to the plot, and for that alone. They could as easily have been prompted by St Matthew’s source, Zechariah 11.12, as by St Matthew. An allusion to the Gospel passage would make no sense, as the article all but admits, since the function of the money in TLOTR is very different from that of the money in St Matthew. Why recall the betrayal of Christ, when the supposedly analogous passage in TLOTR is not a betrayal scene, but simply an instance of driving a hard bargain ? If there is an analogy, it is a broken one.

I hope no-one is going to suggest that the darkness of Moria is a Tolkienisation of the “valley of the shadow of death” in Psalm 23 ! Moria, of course, looks like the Moriah of Gen. 22 - in the Challoner Bible with which Tolkien would presumably have been familiar, it is spelt as Moria. But the seeming allusion can be accounted for by the Elvish origins of the word Moria - no Biblical allusion is required.

Her mode of interpretation has the horrible effect of making Tolkien into a heavy-handed Bible-thumper, constantly obtruding the Christianness of Christian symbolism on his readers. I can’t believe Tolkien would be guilty of such an elementary lack of artistic tact.

When someone takes a bite of bread and a swig of wine, they are not celebrating the Eucharist; they are having some food and drink to restore their strength. The Eucharist takes up bread and wine, because these are the common things of life which people eat. She seems to be of the school that sees the Eucharist in lembas, rather than realising that lembas is bread because it is food, not because it is intended to be a reference to the Eucharist.

Tolkien does use the Bible, but far more subtly. The account of the final fall of Sauron contains clear echoes of the description of the Downfall of Numenor. The description of the “falling hills” that imprison the host of the Numenoreans is significant for at least two reasons:
1. it is a judgement scene
2. it contains, designedly or not, echoes of the judgement scene in Revelation 6.12-17. This is short enough to quote in full:

“12 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; 13and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. 14The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; 16and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?””

Compare 6.13 “a great wind” with “a great wind took them” [the ships of the Faithful].

6.14b sounds like the Meneltarma, and the Island.

6.15-16a sounds like the likely reaction of Ar-Pharazon and his host,

The two references to wrath, given the description of the eagle-like clouds over Numenor, and bearing in mind the War of Wrath against an even greater tyrant than Ar- Pharazon, sound very appropriate to the Downfall.

The reference to the Throne in v. 16 recalls both Valandil’s words to Elendil about “our kinsman on the throne”, and, the reference in the Oath of Cirion to the thrones of the Valar. One of the set features of the Valar is that they are enthroned.

This kind of unobtrusive allusiveness to the Bible and its themes is, I suspect, closer to how Tolkien drew upon it. Such touches are understated, artistically tactful, easy to miss, and they are not limited to the Bible. Tolkien could hardly have been unaware of the legends of kings and heroes - Arthur, Finn mac Cool and the Fianna, Frederick Barbarossa - who (1) were sleeping until the time of their country’s greatest need, when they would awake, and rescue it; (2) were in the meantime removed from the normal sequence of historical events. Barbarossa (who in actuality was drowned) is said to sleep in the Kyffhaeuser mountains; Arthur, like Sceaf Scylding (of whom Tolkien certainly knew, from Beowulf and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), departs over the water; and a Scottish story tells of how a fisherman, adrift in the mist, found an island where there was a cave, in which the Fianna slept. The motif of rulers who come or depart by some sort of vessel upon the water is very widespread, and has been told of Perseus, Horus, Sargon of Akkad, Moses, Semiramis, Arthur, and others. This motif is often used as a means of saying that there is something unearthly about their origin or passing.

IMHO, when Tolkien called TLOTR “a fundamentally Catholic work”, he was referring not to elements of the plot, but to the animating spirit of the tale. Its morality is recognisably Catholic, and its doctrine of good and being is Catholic. It is made clear that one must not do evil for a good end: this is the teaching of St Paul, and a Catholic moral principle. Aragorn is, for all practical purposes, a model Catholic monarch: a formidable warrior, just, wise, merciful, humble, ready to give credit to others, prudent, decisive, ready to undertake whatever labours are needed, a healer, very patient. And he is no prig. But he is interesting not just as a Catholic king in all but name, but also because he is essentially “the last of the Numenoreans”; he is like his ancestors before the coming of the Shadow. He embodies traits that are Christian, and they are also the stuff of myth and legend.

So to look only to the Bible as a source of things in TLOTR, is to risk overlooking other sources.
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Old 01-13-2018, 09:19 AM   #3
Huinesoron
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The fact that 'thirty pieces of silver' is such an obvious source for the 30 silver pennies led me to start looking for other possible explanations (what can I say? I'm contrary). The main possibility I found is that in Britain's pre-decimal currency - the one Tolkien would have been using - thirty pennies, or two and a half shillings, makes a half-crown. Not only is the half-crown a silver coin in its own right; it's also a wonderfully evocative name. The two things the Hobbits acquire in Bree are a half-crown, and Aragorn, the future king. 'The crownless again shall be king' and all that.

More precisely, at that time Aragorn is the de jure king of Arnor - but not yet of Gondor. So, in fact, he only has half of his own metaphorical crown...

Oh, they also pick up a pony called Bill. If we're going all-out on this, we can note that 'Pony' is Cockney rhyming slang for £25, keeping the money theme; and who can forget that the first numbered King of England was named William...?

(I don't think it's worth throwing myself entirely down the rabbithole and trying to connect Aragorn to that £25 value; that would just be ludicrous.)

hS
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Old 01-14-2018, 01:41 PM   #4
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I will take your version H!

The gospel reference just doesn't fit

His careful and usually tasteful invocation of various strands of modern theology is for me a subject of most delicate approaches possible.
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Old 01-14-2018, 03:03 PM   #5
Balfrog
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Huinesoron


"The fact that 'thirty pieces of silver' is such an obvious source for the 30 silver pennies led me to start looking for other possible explanations (what can I say? I'm contrary)."

Yes – now the author points it out – it sounds obvious. But I haven't see any published books by the so called 'experts' that have mentioned it before. Nor do I see anything much on the forums out there. Indeed, hardly anything at all. So maybe not so obvious???

By the way - love the way you think. Except Aragorn was referred to as “crownless” not 'half-a-crownless'. Which would lead me to deduce that Tolkien thought the matter was binary – i.e either fully a King or fully not.


lindil

" I will take your version H!

The gospel reference just doesn't fit."



Really - that seems so definitive!
Love to see an explanation.


Saurondil


"Seems to me either too far-fetched, or mistaking the things of common life for specifically Christian allusions."



I must say that first sentence puts me off reading the rest of your post – even though by its length – I know you put some decent effort in.

So really???
Thirty silver pennies and its connection biblically – is something Tolkien would have been unaware of???

How's about a mixture of subtle and not so subtle symbolic embedments?
Is that beyond belief - or do we all know Tolkien so well that we can definitively say one way or the other?


When it comes to:

“… the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”
– The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #142

Then the 30 silver pennies it's either a logical fit or not.
I'm not a rocket-scientist – but I don't think I need to be one to arrive at a rational conclusion.



lindil, Huinesoron, Saurondil


I think its worthwhile reading Ms. Seth's post again - and carefully. The insertion of specific amounts of coinage along with type - is extremely rare in TLotR. Just on that basis one can reasonably deduce there was something behind it.
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Old 01-28-2018, 04:13 AM   #6
Saurondil
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Balfrog View Post
Huinesoron


"The fact that 'thirty pieces of silver' is such an obvious source for the 30 silver pennies led me to start looking for other possible explanations (what can I say? I'm contrary)."

Yes – now the author points it out – it sounds obvious. But I haven't see any published books by the so called 'experts' that have mentioned it before. Nor do I see anything much on the forums out there. Indeed, hardly anything at all. So maybe not so obvious???

By the way - love the way you think. Except Aragorn was referred to as “crownless” not 'half-a-crownless'. Which would lead me to deduce that Tolkien thought the matter was binary – i.e either fully a King or fully not.


lindil

" I will take your version H!

The gospel reference just doesn't fit."



Really - that seems so definitive!
Love to see an explanation.


Saurondil


"Seems to me either too far-fetched, or mistaking the things of common life for specifically Christian allusions."


I must say that first sentence puts me off reading the rest of your post – even though by its length – I know you put some decent effort in.
Sorry, not understood.
Quote:

So really???
Thirty silver pennies and its connection biblically – is something Tolkien would have been unaware of???
I can’t see anything in my post that means that.
Quote:

How's about a mixture of subtle and not so subtle symbolic embedments?
Is that beyond belief - or do we all know Tolkien so well that we can definitively say one way or the other?

When it comes to:

“… the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”
– The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #142

Then the 30 silver pennies it's either a logical fit or not.
I'm not a rocket-scientist – but I don't think I need to be one to arrive at a rational conclusion.
STM the thirty silver pennies owe their description to the needs of the story, and to nothing beyond that. They fit logically where they are found, but that is no reason to see any deeper significance in them. If, OTOH, Tolkien himself said they had some further significance, that would change matters entirely. But I have never heard of any such utterance by him.

That they are thirty, and silver, and pennies, is explicable by the needs of the story, without need of any far-fetched allegorising. Tolkien’s distaste for allegory is a matter of record, and the allegory suggested would not work properly - given Tolkien’s “artistic tact”, I can’t believe he would perpetrate such a clumsy and inexpert allegory. IMHO, looking for Christ-figures, Passion-analogies, analogies to the Eucharist, and that sort of thing, is misguided and back to front, and turns what was an endlessly impressive story into a clumsy, heavy-handed, and dishonest attempt at proselytising. Mount Doom is not Calvary - it is a live volcano, and as such, of practical use to Sauron. As for “way-bread” being viaticum, it resembles in name, but hardly in use.

Such faults are best left to products - stories, is too complimentary - like the Left Behind series. One need be no expert or mind-reader to know that Tolkien wrote far better than that.

lindil is right: the Gospel reference doesn’t fit. As for Balfrog’s suggestions - well spotted, and very amusing
Quote:


lindil, Huinesoron, Saurondil


I think its worthwhile reading Ms. Seth's post again - and carefully. The insertion of specific amounts of coinage along with type - is extremely rare in TLotR. Just on that basis one can reasonably deduce there was something behind it.
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