Trilogy and Bible?

[Estel the Descender]

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[Disclaimer: I am glad at the development of this thread. We who post here seems to have disproved the notion that the LotR is somehow an allegory of the Bible. I hope that instead of finding hidden meanings in the LotR, we examine Tolkien’s work in comparison with the Bible. In short, I hope that we can get into actual textual criticism. Furthermore, I hope that what follows will not be taken as a form of ‘appropriation’ of the LotR by a Christian in the sense that ‘If you believe that only Christians (of all denominations) can truly appreciate LotR, or - inversely - that if you appreciate LotR, that somehow proves or validates the ultimate truth of specific Christian tenets ... this is appropriation.’ You do not need to be a Christian in order to know proper hermeneutics. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]]

littlemanpoet,

Your evidence, my friend, would be very persuasive in a court of law - until scholars representing other schools of thought were brought in and put on the witness stand and given their chance to interpret your evidence according to their own lights. Then the jury would be left with the task of forming an opinion based on their own lights.

Which means that all your evidence really serves to give credence to my main point, since that which you presented as fact is, actually, the opinion of scholars of a certain school of thought regarding your evidence. Other scholars will point out quite as demonstratively that it "should be obvious to anybody with any sense" (quoting Thomas Cahill here) that the Pentateuch is a compilation of numerous writings from numerous periods of time, organized for the best and most useful presentation.
<div align=right>--- littlemanpoet</div>

I wonder what Cahill meant by ‘anybody with any sense?’ Hmm– did he mean, ‘To anybody who would interpret the Torah as “myth” and not “history” would see that the “Pentateuch is a compilation of numerous writings from numerous periods of time, organized for the best and most useful presentation”.’ But this characterization is a bit unfair, after all

. . . the Pentateuch is a collection of oral tradition stories whose errors actually often help prove that they are based in reality, compared to most of 'myth'. [emphasis mine]
<div align=right>--- littlemanpoet</div>

I take it then that you do believe that the Torah is ‘historical myth’, or as Tolkien would say, ‘Legend and History have met and fused.’ Thus, when the Torah says that Moses parted the Red Sea, this event actually took place. The only thing we seem to disagree on is the date of writing of the actual manuscript. But what exactly do you mean by ‘errors’. Did you mean ‘typographical errors’, the errors in copying? Or did you mean ‘reportage errors’

. . . [R]eportage–though it may no doubt contain errors–pretty close up to the facts. . . [emphasis mine]
<div align=right>– C.S. Lewis</div>

If either of the above is what you mean by ‘errors’ then I am in a position to agree with you. Typographical errors are easy to deal with: just find other copies of the same manuscript and make a comparison. Reportage errors help prove that the manuscripts are eyewitness accounts, written immediately after the event or in hindsight by the eyewitnesses themselves or their ‘interviewers’.

But if what you mean is ‘historical errors’, that all those miracles, the Creation of Humanity, the Great Flood, the Ten Plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the giving of the Decalogue, the Fall of Jericho, all else in the Torah are nothing more than non-literal, symbolical myths that impart some allegorical truth.

This begs the question: what do you mean by myth? Do you mean it in the same way as the ancient Greeks, myth being the literal true history of their gods, or do you mean it in that it means a story that is not literally true? Or is it somewhere in between?

If you deem it necessary to cast aspersions on the faith of the scholars of schools of thought other than that to which you adhere, I imagine they would take great umbrage and say as courteously as they know how that you speak out of a (sometimes called 'fundamentalist') triumphalism that they find ignores too much of the evidence; and then they would insist that their faith in Jesus is every bit as legitimate as yours, regardless of their opinions concerning the Scriptures.
<div align=right>--- littlemanpoet</div>

Am I to understand, given your use of the terms ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘triumphalist’ that your belief about myth is decidedly ‘non-literal?’ As to the appellations

We are not fundamentalists.
<div align=right>– C.S. Lewis</div>

What evidence do I ignore? It seems to me that, with all due courtesy and respect, that they are the ones who ‘[ignore] too much of the evidence’. How can I say this with a straight [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] face? Letsee–

. . . I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur. Thus any statement put into Our Lord’s mouth by the old texts, which, if He had really made it, would constitute a prediction into the future, is taken to have been put in after the occurrence which it seemed to predict. This is very sensible if we start by knowing that inspired prediction can never occur. Similarly in general, the rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous in general never occurs. Now I do not here want to discuss whether the miraculous is possible. I only want to point out that this is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon ‘ If miraculous, unhistorical’ is one they bring into the study of the texts [eisegesis], not one they have learned from it [exegesis]. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing. On this they speak simply as men; men obviously influenced by, and perhaps insufficiently critical of, the spirit of the age they grew up with.
<div align=right>– C.S. Lewis</div>

What he meant of course was that those ‘scholars’ were influenced by their logical positivist-skepticist philosophies that doubts everything from reason to Shakespeare

. . . I have learned in other fields of study how transitory the ‘assured results of modern scholarship’ may be, how soon scholarship ceases to be modern. The confident treatment to which the New Testament is subjected is no longer applied to profane [Lewis means ‘secular’] texts. There used to be English authors who were prepared to cut up Henry VI between half a dozen authors and assign his share to each. We don’t do that now. . . Even the belief of the ancient Greeks that the Mycenaeans were their ancestors and spoke Greek has been surprisingly supported.
<div align=right>– C.S. Lewis</div>

These ‘modern scholars’ ignore the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which shows that the Old Testament as we know it today was already known then before Christ. Only the caves that were dated after the 1st century CE had any ‘apocryphal’ writings.

Let us reconstruct! Supposing we were in Middle Earth at around the 7th Age. We meet several scholars from Gondor who says that The Hobbit, or There and Back Again could not have been written by Bilbo Baggins. ‘Why, we know how present Halflings dislike travel and adventure. Furthermore, the book has been written in the third person: if it was a personal recollection, it should have been written in the first person.’ About the Red Book of Westmarch: Thain’s Copy: ‘It is impossible for the Book to have been written by untravelled Halflings. Furthermore, it is riddled with errors. There could not have been an historical Gandalf: he was merely a Patriarchal construct. And as for the Elves: how do we know that they are immortal? We see very little of them and about the only time we see them is when they go over the Sea. How do we know that there is a “Faerie” to where they go to? Our explorers find no trace of this “Faerie”. Furthermore, there are conflicting accounts as to the location of “Faerie”: is it to the West of Endor or is it actually located in the valley formerly known as Lothlorien? What if the elves actually go to the Sea in order to die in secret? We know that Queen Arwen died when she failed to “go over the Sea”. It is probable that elves have a similar life-span as we humans do: elves being just another race of humans. And dwarves? They must have been a race of Halflings who were hairier than usual: they are not a separate race as portrayed in the Thain’s book. As for the descendants of Numenoreans having a longer lifespan than most humans–that is nothing more than myth, legends that the redactors inserted in order to justify racism among the Edain. Besides, there is no evidence that Amar was ever flat!’

Why include the second letter of Peter?
<div align=right>--- littlemanpoet</div>

Supposing in our ‘reality’ but in the 51st century, we find scholars who say, ‘The Silmarillion is obviously not written by JRR Tolkien. For one thing, the style of the work differs from his attested works, the original Hobbit (not the spurious “corrected” version) and the LotR Trilogy. You must realise that in the last half of the 20th century and the early quarter of the 21st century was engaged in that phenomena which was the writing of “Fan-fics” (fiction based on Tolkien’s LotR). The Silmarillion was one of these, evidently based on the Appendices of The Return of the King. The name of both John and Christopher Tolkien was merely inserted later in the 22nd century in order to give the Silmarillion ‘respectability’ as part of the canon and was probably composed by Walter Hooper. But modern scholarship now knows that the Quenta Silmarillion is actually a form of “Fan-fic”. Furthermore, the LotR was actually a joint writing by Tolkien and the Inklings. The Black Speech, based on Gaelic, was no doubt the invention of fellow Fantasy writer, the Irish C.S. Lewis. Sindarin was probably created by a Welsh student of Tolkien as a part of a college thesis. . .’

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[ June 30, 2002: Message edited by: Estel the Descender ]