Contents

1 Eru == God ? 2 legendarium??? 3 recent removals 4 Middle-earth canon 5 Finnish mythology

Eru == God ?

The claim that Eru is identical to the God of Judaism, the God of Christianity, and the God of Islam is bizarre. Tolkien knew Eru was fictional, and believed that at least one of the others was not. -- Someone else 02:09 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

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I was dubious about this too, but the statement is half-right in that Eru was the supreme god and creator, so he is more like the Christian god and less like, say, Odin. The inclusion of a super-god in the pantheon is actually kind of an interesting anachronism in Tolkien's pagan-North-Europe-derived mythology. Perhaps when I finish reading the History of Middle-Earth I'll have a cogent way to rephrase this statement. Stan Shebs 02:41 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

If anything, I think the system of emanations of Eru that Tolkien devised was Gnostic at its base, but I leave it to you to find a way to characterize the Theology of Eru<G> -- Someone else 02:53 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

That's because JRRT's mythology is not "pagan-North-Europe-derived". At best, it's "pagan-North-Europe-inspired" or "-influenced". dab 10:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth defines Ilúvatar as God. He may not be "identical" to the ?real God (although how could you tell?!), but is Tolkien's fictionalised version of the all-wise, all-knowing and all-compassionate God within the "sub-created" world of Middle-earth. Lee M 00:48, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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My opinion, as a fan of Narnia and of Middle-Earth, as well as a Christian and a science-fiction fan, is that the Ainulindale was intended as the cosmological creation story of Middle-Earth, analogous to the first three chapters of Genesis in the Bible; a similar story shows up in The Magician's Nephew. I think that, though a Christian, Tolkien wanted to be true to the literary style of the Norse mythology that was dear to him. Thus he made Eru Ilúvatar, a monotheistic God, and the Ainur, created beings of tremendous power and intelligence. While Ilúvatar is infinite, they are finite, no matter how powerful they are. They can be called gods rightly, but never Gods. This is similar to the view of the Old Testament portrayal of other gods as merely demons (fallen angels); thus Melkor's battle is against the harmony of Eru, as Satan's battle is against the righteous rule of God, and Tash against Aslan, not as Loki against other nigh-immortals. In support of this view, I offer the point that C. S. Lewis, in his Narnia series, included dryads and naiads and even a river god, small "g". Your thoughts? -- BlueNight 04:08, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. I think "Eru = God" is as untenable as any other allegorical interpretation of the legendarium. There are clear influences, but ultimately Eru is not the Christian God (or any other deity) pasted in. He's as much a representation of Tolkien as the Author as he is of God. (Incidentally, why is "He" capitalised several times in the article? This isn't from Tolkien, and is usually only done by adherents of a particular religion; do we have some Eruists here? ;) --Perey 11:20, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Eru = God" is not an "allegorical" interpretation. What is your understanding of "allegorical"? For Tolkien, myth is diametrically opposed to allegory. Ainulindale is a myth in which God is referred to as Eru. Allegory would be if we say, the Ring is the Nuclear Bomb, Gandalf is Jesus Christ, Sam is really Tolkien, and Tom Bombadil is the Warwickshire countryside spirit. (Oops, Bombadil "is" the Warwickshire countryside spirit, but the other examples would be allegories detested by JRRT). dab 10:26, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I meant of course that "Eru is the Christian God" is allegory. "Eru is a God-figure", and "Bombadil is a countryside spirit", are mythical, but saying either is that particular real-world God or countryside spirit is as allegorical as "Gandalf is Jesus". --Perey 22:20, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

well, in the case of God, there is some difficulty in defining "real world". Eru was certainly intended to be identical with the "Christian God" (who is of course imagined as "the" God, and doesn't need "Christian" as a specification), but in pre-Christian times, seeing that Middle-Earth is intended to be *this* Earth, in a setting several millennia BC. dab 07:10, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, Eru in the Silmarillion is an 'allegory' for God just as much as the horses and birch trees appearing in the LotR are 'allegories' for horses and birch trees: "Eru" is Quenya for "God", just like "roch" is Sindarin for "horse": that's not an allegory, it's just a name given in another language. dab (ᛏ) 10:47, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

legendarium???

What is meant by "legendarium"? Why use such an uncommon term? User:Bkonrad/sig 14:58, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You can see what it means by clicking on legendarium. As for why use it - it's because Tolkien himself used this term. Ausir 15:04, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

recent removals

I do not think the removals by Steuard were very helpful. It's always easier to just delete stuff than to correct, expand and rearrange. The "Ainur and Maiar" could have been corrected to "Valar and Maiar" rather than simply cut. The parallels with Lewis may have deserved a section of their own. The question of creation of sapient beings runs through Tolkien's works (Creation of Orcs etc.) and would also deserve a section on its own. The Tom Bombadil issue keeps cropping up and this is the right place to discuss it. I agree that the article was not "finished" but if you just cut awkward stuff rather than improving it, WP would shrink dramatically! As User:Steuard says, he doesn't "have much time to spend on this Wikipedia thing", he should maybe be content to make less sweeping changes. dab 09:42, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1. I think the comparisons with Lewis are quite relevant to this article.
2. Creation questions also belong in this article, I think. I'd like to merge Children of Ilúvatar here and expand to explain the concept. Comments?
3. Perhaps the question about Tom Bombadil would fit better into Tom Bombadil? [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 16:45, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, and I did share and consider them to some degree; I probably should have explained my deletions here on the talk page at once. On the other hand, part of Wikipedia's philosophy is "be bold", and I acted with the knowledge that if people strongly disagreed with my edits, the previous version was preserved in the page's history. Let me address each of the concerns that you raised in a bit more detail.

• I hesitated between changing "Ainur and Maiar" to "Ainur" or to "Valar and Maiar", and my final choice was driven by my desire for both conciseness and accuracy. Not only is "Ainur" shorter, but there were Ainur who were neither Valar nor Maiar. I suspect that most of those never entered Ea, but I know that there are readers who believe that some Ainur in Ea were neither Valar nor Maiar. (Moreover, why _shouldn't_ we call the Ainur who never left "heaven" angels?) Saying just "Ainur" neatly avoids those issues, and is perfectly accurate.
• Parallels between Lewis and Tolkien might well deserve a section or even an article of their own, but I honestly don't feel that the connection is significant when it comes to Eru. Both Eru and the "Emperor over the sea" are based strongly on the Christian concept of God (if not exclusively so), and the Christian concept of God (at least in the first person of the trinity) is "physical[ly] separat[ed] from the world He created". Thus, I don't see any value or importance in mentioning a Tolkien-Lewis connection here any more than I would see a value in mentioning any other author whose fiction involves a Christian-like God. I don't think that Tolkien's decision to separate God from his creation was inspired by Lewis, nor vice versa, despite their mutual influence in many other ways.
• The more I think about it, the more I am starting to agree with you that sapient beings deserve their own discussion here. It's a very interesting question, and it seems that Tolkien never really settled the details in his own mind. And I must admit that my decision to delete that sentence was made in part because I was daunted by the prospect of writing a full discussion of it, though it was also based on my perception that the sentence should not be left as it stood because it was not NPOV. On the other hand, if someone does write a full discussion on this point without expanding the rest of the article as well, it would probably be the biggest section of the article, which would in my opinion give the article a rather unbalanced emphasis. At that point, I would feel like we would either want to move it to its own article ("Sapient beings in Middle-earth"?) or seriously expand the rest of the article. But I guess your point is well taken: the article won't ever get fleshed out if people simply remove the stubs of its future form.
• As for Tom Bombadil, again you're probably right that the (non-)connection deserves to be mentioned here. My decision to remove it was based on my feeling that the "Who (or what) is Tom Bombadil?" controversy shouldn't be allowed to bleed over into essentially unrelated articles, at least in the case of thoroughly unlikely or discredited theories. (After all, the vast majority of people coming to the Eru article are looking for information on Eru, not on Tom Bombadil.) Thus, possible Bombadil connections should probably not be included in the articles on Beren, Thingol, Tulkas... or Eru Ilúvatar (yes, I've seen all of those advocated in the past). Still, you may be right that the Eru-Bombadil connection comes up often enough that it should be mentioned here at least briefly; we'll have to think about the best way to present it. (I would suggest putting it in a very distinct paragraph or section, to make it clear that it doesn't "flow" from the rest of the article.)

Finally, regarding that comment on my user page, it's certainly true: I don't have a whole lot of time to spend here. Still, if you look at my contributions, I have made at least a few reasonably substantial contributions to the Tolkien material here. I'm still fairly new and I'm sure that I've got a lot to learn about Wikipedia and its culture, but I think on the whole I've behaved pretty well. :) In any case, I'll look forward to your reply.--Steuard 17:07, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

• thanks for your detailed reply, Steuard. I hope you don't take my allusion to your user page wrongly, I know I feel very annoyed myself when people try to dig up personal information from my user page to hurl at me in a dispute. I just did that because you seemed to have deleted stuff in passing, without bothering to give your reasons. Of course nothing is lost, and I could just have reverted, had I really been that unhappy, after all. So I hope you'll excuse the slightly sarcastic tone of my previous comment.
• the "Valar and Ainur" point is too minor to argue, no problem.
• the Lewis part was not "mine" anyway, and I tend to agree with you.
• so let's maybe restore the 'sapience' and 'Bombadil' stuff (I understand your Bombadilian concerns, though, but it's very brief, and even if a non-issue, it proves a diehard non-issue).

cheers, dab 17:27, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No problem, and no offense taken. I did feel like I should have explained myself more fully earlier, so I'm glad that you brought it up and encouraged me to do so. --Steuard 21:08, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Middle-earth canon

moved to Template talk:Mecanon — please see my reply there. dab 13:15, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Finnish mythology

Finnish mythology is not the same or part of Norse mythology. Ausir 08:00, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I expect the blanket term 204.209.209.129 was aiming at was Scandinavian, rather than Norse, mythology. (But Scandinavian mythology redirects to Norse mythology anyway. Guess this is an instance where Finland is meant to be excluded.) The question is, what 'broader generalisation' does he or she refer to in the edit summary? Finnish mythology seems to fit fine. -- Perey 20:24, 15 May 2005 (UTC)