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the Book of Lost Tales [c. 1917- early20's] was set in a pre-england/Ireland and while some characters and plots and motives were similar, virtually every aspect of the Legendarium underwent radical revision over the course of 50+ years.
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Aye, granted. I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing threads regarding Tolkien canon, and at first was amazed by the diversity illustrated throughout Middle-Earth’s development. A lot of posts in these threads caught details that I had missed during my casual reading. These threads also represent the ongoing debate over what should or should not be accepted as authoritative canon. I’m not going to attempt to get into what should or should not be considered authoritative canon; however, I do think its important in a discussion such as this to point out dichotomies in development, to pick apart and separate diverse, sometimes contrary, elements of Tolkien’s narrative and speculation over the years in order to answer the question: Did Tolkien succeed in consciously revising the text according to his Christian faith?
In regards to cosmology, though, I definitely see influences from non-Christian myths (but I wouldn’t consider myself an authority on the subject). It is especially apparent that Tolkien was familiar with the Gylfaginning saga. There is the void, called Ginnungagap in the Norse sagas, somewhat similar to Tolkien’s void (though the Greek chaos could fill the same role now that I think about it), and into Ginnungagap the world was created. The great serpent, Nidhogg, like Melkor, lives in the world, gnawing away at its roots. The parallel between Asgard and Valinor/the Aesir and the Valar is somewhat obvious. When Tolkien conceived the Dagor Dagorath, he had in mind the Norse Ragnarök. There are also many Celtic elements. The Undying Lands seem very similar to the Sidhe, the Otherworld, is explained in Celtic mythology, and Tolkien’s elves remind me very much of the Tuatha de Danann. I’m sure others could find other similarities and parallels with a plethora of other mythologies.
Any-who, its my premises that Tolkien started from these sources in the construction of his cosmology, and only afterwards, finding that his Christianity had unconsciously incorporated itself into his work, did he consciously revise his mythology according to his Christian faith and beliefs. In other words, there is a tension in both Tolkien’s speculations and narrative, between elements of non-Christian myths (as opposed to “unchristian” which on my part was probably the wrong term to use) and Tolkein’s Christian beliefs.
Like Doug and Voronwe point out, one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the revision probably was the existence of so many sentient races with different sources. Ents, elves, men, dwarves (and Valar and Maia for that matter) all share that Hildegardian cosmic center, but all have different origins and dooms, complicating x10 a notion of original sin. Tolkien is pretty much forced to present men (if Middle-Earth is a mythological set up for future redemption in Christ, which I think he wanted it to be) as sinning and falling. How to do so, given the entrenched cosmology of his world, was a bit tricky, or at least a bit tricky to get past us knit-pickers. (For what’s it worth, CS Lewis’ Aslan falls short in many ways as an allegory for Christ, but his tales of Narnia are still, simply put, awesome, both as story and as Christian allegory.)
So in answer to the above question: Tolkien never worked out this tension to his satisfaction. The end result still presents Eru as different in many ways from YHWH, and the world in which Tolkien’s characters live and play is different in many ways from the Christian world in which Tolkien wrote and prayed. Personally, I’m happy he didn’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be having discussions like this.