ONLY The Silmarillion
 

Let's say we have no Old Testament, Baghavad Vita, Tao, Confucian anything, NO spiritual/religious writings. But we DO have The Silmarillion. Well? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Does that mean I get to be an elf? For real? With REAL pointy ears? [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]
Hmmm...interesting thought, littlemanpoet! The church names would be changed, that's for sure!
Will have to ponder this awhile!

Well, look what happened with the Hobbits. They all became secular Humanists!

This is not garnering quite the interst I had hoped, so let me try again:

The ONLY origins tale in existence would be The Music of the Ainur, and the only conception of life after death would be Tol Eressea and Valinor and the Halls of Mandos.

What would this have done to the thinking of various people now and in history?

Up! :p

What would Columbus have thought about the new world?

What would the history of the Jews be like?

Et cetera?

I don't know if this is entirely related to the original question, but I have wondered this:

What if, by some freak chance, mankind and nearly all of its creations were destroyed (including all the religious texts, etc.), except for the Silmarillion? Supposing the people who next developed and inhabited the earth found the book, were able to translate it, and thought it was a history book of a distant age long before their existence? It's a long shot, but I think it is theoretically possible that the new inhabitants would make "the Music of the Ainur" their Creation story and adopt the rest as the history of their world.

But I'm just weird like that. :D

Too long & complex to go into here, but there is an essay in the collection Tolkien the Medievalist - 'Augustine in the Cottage of Lost Play: The Ainulindale as asterisk cosmogony' by John William Houghton, which shows that Ainulindale is not in contradiction to Genesis:

In short, Houghton shows that Ainulindale can be interpreted so as to fit with no contradictions into a Christian understanding of creation. Certainly, if all we had was The Silmarillion - the whole Sil, including works like the Athrabeth, we would very possibly end up with a kind of amalgam of Judaism & Christianity - ie, the monotheism, with out the complex rituals, but with a kind of messianic belief in the coming of a saviour. How 'Pagan' it would be is another question, & whether it would produce Crusades, Inquisitions, witch burnings, bombing of abortion clinics & all the rest, is a question of whether you believe that those things were/are religiously inspired, or just down to the way human beings are.

A Tolkienian pseudo-history of the Fall of Rome
 

Encaitare, that's the kind of thinking I was hoping for. :)

davem, it comes as no surprise to me that no dissonance is seen to exist between the Ainulindalë and the Genesis account. For me, that's one of the beauties of it.

Dorothy Sayers (an erstwhle Inkling of a sort) wrote a book called "Mind of the Maker", in which she puts forward an artistic view of the whole creation versus evolution debate, proposing that an artistic approach is as legitimate as the scientific, as an explanation or exploratoin of origins. I'm not getting this across very well, it's been a while since I read the book, and I don't own it. Anyway, it's just an aside.

I'll take a stab at what I'm talking about, as if I were, say, Bëthius (sp?) or some such.

"The Visigoths have sacked Rome. The Ostrogoths laid the Empire waste before them. The Vandals will follow. These events seem positively Melkorian in their destructive capacity."

Pretty lame, I know, but I thought I'd take a stab. :p

Creation myths
 

If the Silmarilion had been the most important religious manuscript on the planet, I for one would pay more attention in the religion lessons at school ;)
Actually, the first time I read the SILM I commented to a friend of mine who was reading it at the same time that it reminded me and awful lot of the old testament, because there were so many names to remember...
I think that if the SILM had been written down in Quenya a couple of thousand years ago after having been passed down orally for ages, it could very well have had the same position as any other religious book.
As we approached modern times the Eru-ism (or whatever) probably would've evolved a lot like Christianity, because the two are quite similar (hardly a surprise as Tolkien was a Catholic), but I just have this one thought: In the Silm there are female Valar, and there are no terrible sins committed by women, so perhaps the Eru-ism would've avoided a few gender discriminations that Christianity has caused or supported in the past.

PS: a year or so ago, there was talk in Norway about opening for moslems to be allowed to swear at the Coran instead of at the Norwegian laws or the Bible when witnessing in trials. A humorist commented drily "yeah, well, the Lord of the Rings is also a very important book for lots of people" :D

You make a good point, vanwalossien, regarding women. Hebrew culture has always had a piece of mysogyny about it, as has Germanic, for that matter. The Celtic culture hasn't, from what I have read and heard.

One feature of discourse among the learned, and not so learned, perhaps, might be, "Have all the Elves gone over sea?" Which would put a different bent on exploration, too... Would the native Americans have been treated differently... at least, at first? Purely speculative, of course...

Native "Elves"
 

Supposedly the Aztecs thought that the Spanish explorers who arrived were gods, or messengers from the gods, because of their unusual (to them, at least) appearance. Perhaps if it was widely believed that in the West yet dwelt the Elves, it would have been the other way around. The explorers may have made a crusade of sorts, and believed that the natives they encountered were Elves. How disappointed they would have been to discover the truth ... ;)

But they probably would have had great respect for the Native American at first, since they would have considered them to be wise, wonderful beings. However, when they failed to witness any great acts of elven "magic" and such, the explorers probably would have turned on them, deciding that they weren't going to revere people who seemed too much like regular people.

Yay! This is a speculative thread which is actually quite thought-provoking!

Wow! this idea as been in my head since I first found Tolkien (Hiding under a rock.. silly man). I often wondered, perhaps people would try and sail a ship to Valinor, and go off to the undieing lands. Or, more likely, they would make a wide rage of Valanorian products for all to buy and sell. :D

But seriously, perhaps it would then be taught in schools! AS history! Now I want a time machine to go to this future world of Silmarillion worshipers... wait... (Looks around the Downs...) hum...

Moreover, the elvish language might be taught like Latin is now. People would go searching in the sea for Meathos’ Silmarill. It would be a mad middle earth place… cool!

I think one of the Moderators will move this to mirth if we are not careful...

And, as tought from childhood as 'reality of this world' seem to lot of people boring ordinary thing, who would turn to internet message boards and discuss works of T.B.B.Foolhardy, where they had no Valar, no elves at all, but some strange beings named Progressives and such, where there were no Trees to light the sky but bulbs of Gas. Cool!

Though screens may have come out to be round, after all.

If seriously, the question is quite a hard one.

As Tolkien puts it, the Silmarillion (corpus) is pre-Christian, it can not replace New Testament and Christianity, but the switch would have worked in case if only Old Testament were to be replaced. Than prophecy of Christ's birth would be ascribed to Finrod and Andreth

Sil would not replace other systems, and there would have been no impact on, say, Buddhism or Induism - those are too different to be easily replaced. If there were only Silmarillion among the Sacred Texts to go on, I think people who now belong to Eastern confessions would write them anew.

Islam may have been slightly different, as it was introduced in 6th century AD, and its moral system is synthesis of both Judaism and Christianity. But not significantly, I suppose, for Muhammad would take moral imperatives, not particular details out of it, and imperatives of Silmarillion comply with those of Judaic Law and Christianity. Instead of Abraam there would probably be Aragorn though, and term saracins, applied to Arabs (With the meaning of Sarah's Dogs - descendants of Abraam's children Sarah threw out) would become arwencins, probably (with an assumption that some other wife there were for Aragorn for those other children to be born in the first place)

Common names of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be different. Probably, Greek ones would keep their place, and I would still be George, but davem definitely would become Melben ;)

That all with a proviso that even with changed texts to go on, all the history were to repeat itself in the same locations - starting in Palestine and going in circles around. If it were to start in North-West Europe, Numenoreans playing the role of Chosen People, than instead of Jerusalem, crusades would go other way round, probably to some town on western shore of France or Spain, the role of Muslims would play some other ethnic group (basques?). Not England – Crusade on spiritual fuel is not efficient, the town must have been wealthy too, and England’s wealth comes to be there only after some form of capitalistic society begins to evolve.

Well, I can go on endlessly, but let us turn to, as Duchess liked to tell Alice, morals of it:

There would be no difference for man as a man, and no improvement of society . It all comes down to ‘that’s how human beings are’. Differences of religious belief are almost always traceable down to power-trip of this or that leader back in history. There are shia’ and suna’ in Islam, because after Muhammad’s death two parties wanted their candidate to become a khalif. There are Eastern and Western Churches because Patriarch and Pope were both arrogant men.

Probably, the position of women would have been better. But again, maybe not. For disparity is not caused by beliefs, rather beliefs and codes come around to form a theoretical base for already existing disparity.

Merely silly theological questions would be different though – instead of ‘how many angels can dance on a pinhead’ there would be ‘how exactly pointy were elven ears’ or ‘how many fathoms long where balrog wings, if there were any’

And with that, let me, whatever my personal feelings, second the proposal of moving current thread to Mirth

cheers

If there were no spiritual texts in the world apart from The Silmarillion? Personally, I don't like the thought of that. For one, I like the fact that there are many different spiritual paths to choose from, and I also think that belief is an intensely personal thing; for me, no faith has more validity than another, and I like to think I can respect another person's differing faith for that reason. I have not found any one path that is quite right for me, so I'm happy that I can choose from many, or even none. The thought of only having one path and no other scares me! Even if it is Tolkien's path!

Sorry, I know that's not humorous, and now I've dragged the whole thread down.......... :)

I don't like the idea of only one text, either, but remember all the texts had to be written at some point. Doubtless there would be people who would not believe in what the Sil said, and they would go about creating their own faiths. These faiths would probably branch off the Sil and then eventually go their own ways... think how Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all had similar roots but then diverged.

hhmmmm.
 

It means you get to believe what you wish.(just as it always has been,) but we are all still bound by the chain of Angainor. Believe what you wish .Yet man serves to enthrall man. No matter the religious victor there would still be those who would crush your flower garden simply because it stands; and maybe I would be one of them.

ancient texts
 

It occurs to me that there's a slightly different way to think about this question. The received texts of the major religions came out of the Hindus, Chinese, Jews, and Arabs. The myths came from everywhere, but most of them not as received texts. Those myths that come to us through texts are Hindu, Greek, Babylonian, and a few others. The notable exception is the Celtic and Germanic texts. These didn't come into being until roughly 1,000 years ago.

So imagine with me what differences there might be if the Sil and its "hangers-on" had been the Northern mythic text, extant for thousands of years, standing shoulder to shoulder with the other great texts. What might have been different?

The word 'Appendix' would have carried a weight of religious gravity enough to slump the shoulders of any schoolchild in literature class.

Cool idea.
 

I`d be one of the first to convert! :D ;)

Imagining that the Silmarillion and other such texts (Unfinished Tales, Lays of Beleriand, Lost Road) are received texts (those that come down to us by means of our heritage), the North would necessarily have been literate long before it was in actual history. It would still have been saddled with the "flat earth" world view, which would put it on a par with the Greek, Babylonian, etc. myths. The one thing it would be lacking (as Tolkien intended) would be the bloodthirstiness of its greatest heroes and its gods.

Imagine how these things might have affected Germanic and Celtic history, say, around the time of Alexander the Great? or Julius Caesar? or Marcus Aurelius? Constantine? Charlemagne? The implications are vast.

(By the way, it's "what if" questions like this that get us fiction writers really going! :)

I still think those who followed the Sil would be trampled like grass. My reasoning is from the thought that all who "followed" the recieved text of the Sil would by nature of their belief shun technology. Morgoth, Saruman, Sauron would be the banners waved above encroaching armies who would have a rabid lust for technology. " A mind of metal and gears."
The conquests would be both swift and brutal in that . The percieved, "Captains of the West" would be deliberating over the evils of the machinations of the invaders. ( For example the first tank or the first airplane. )
And while they would be deliberating over the hurts caused to middle earth over the creation and production of these machines;said machines would still be rolling across the landscape.
Asking the valar for guidance and none would come. Yet the rape and pillage of the world would grow under the banner of morgoth.

The Bible (well, the New Testament at least ;) ) lacks bloodthirstiness in its heroes and God, and yet that did not change the bloodthirsty course of history (and indeed, in some cases, was used as a basis for violence and persecution). So, in that respect at least, I don't believe that it would have changed the course of history much.

The Dwarves, Noldor, and humans that learned from either, or by their own lights, used technology. Gondor and Rohan apparently had iron smelting, as did the Dwarves. So, Turgon, the trampling of which you speak would not occur until the late 19th century, very late in history, indeed.

Still, I think a distinction is in order (which I've been suggesting already). The Enemy had minds of metal and gears. Which is to say, they cared nothing for environment; they are all about the abuse of the environment. Maybe it is an inherent pessimism in you, Turgon, but I see things a little more positively. If the Sil texts had been extant from, say, 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1000, technological advancement would not necessarily have been unheard of. Rather, until the 19th century, there would have been no dissonance between tech advance and environmental care, because there wasn't much anyway, before the industrial era.

I am aware of the explosion of technology starting in the 19th and 20th century.And the smelting skills of the seperate goodly races.(which was not at the expense of nature as opposed to melkor and minions) I must have a vastly differant opinion on said subject.(pessimistic perhaps)
I merely disagree with most people's overweening "feeling" that it may somehow be better. my reason- history is shot full of examples of the crimes against humanity said crimes made by MAN himself No Matter what philosophy or religion is in play. Since the dawn of time.
So that being said , my answer to the question is. No difference in my fallible opinion.