[Halfir]

I come very late to this debate,and apologise if some of the comments I make have previously been said more elegantly by others.

In looking through this very extensive and well-argued thread one point comes to my mind that some of the professed Christian posters, not all, appear to miss. It is this: ' 'What added value does seeing analogies between Tolkien's works and the Bible, bring to our understanding of the stories.?

In my view, none whatsoever.

That is not to decry those who hold to such parallelism ,it's simply to say that it doesn't matter. Tolkien's writings work whatever religious faith you believe him to have held.

Marileangorifurnimaluim: (your posts are great but your name is as bad as some of those I have to deal with in Thailand- can't we call you something shorter?) I very much appreciated two of your many seminal comments:

"There is a common emotional language that is not just spoken"and "Tolkien sought an epic universality, not an allegory".

He not just sought one, he achieved one of the greatest, which is why LOTR will live for ever while the Chronicles of Nania will wither and fade. These two points are just some of many that you make so tellingly.

River Jordan: I respect your openness about your Christian faith, but like C.S.Lewis, it tramels your viewpoint. Your comment about God as central to Tolkien's literary work, and the added comment of Carpenter's view of a 'deeply religious man' omits the point that it is the concept of the fall that is central, and that has many pre-Christian antecedents. Moreover, religious does not simply equate with Christian anymore than does, Jew, Hindu, Muslim et. al.

What I find concerning in the posts of many Chrisitians like yourself is either an ignorance of or a wilful attempt to avoid admitting that much of the Christian myth is pre-Christian in origin.

Luineeldaiel for example, seems unaware of the fact that the concept of the king as healer has a lengthy pre-Christian existence.(If I am doing her an injustice in stating this, I apologise, but she does not qualify her point.)

You have already been taken to task by others more qualified than I regarding your contention about the author's true meaning, which appears to show a complete lack of knowledge of Tolkien's theory of applicability in which the freedom of the reader is positively contrasted with the purposed domination of the author - the main difference between Tolkien and Lewis as writers.

I find your Harry Potter arguments meretricious - you are not comparing like with like, and I won't waste time on commenting on the absurd arguments put forward by Christian fundamentalists that HP is a back-door to the occult!

Bryniana: I loved your comment that :"It takes away from the literature itself to continually focus on parallel's that aren't there."

Which brings me back to my earlier point, what value added is gained by trying to find parallels between Tolkien's writings and the Bible?

Nothing wrong in doing so if it suits your picture of the world, but please don't be arrogant enough to believe that we all think in the same way, that good and evil don't have relevance outside a Christian consciousness, and don't forget that some of us believe Christianity itself is only part of a cycle of myths that man seems to see as a necessity by which to explain the world to himself.

To friends of mine who bang the "Tolkien is this, that, and the other drum" I simply say - read the books. Do they stand or fall by their own grace? They certainly do. Do we have to see parallels in them in order to fully comprehend them? Certainly not.

When Frodo, at the Council of Elrond, offers to take the Ring, Elrond says:" But if you take it freely, I will say that your choice is right; and though all the mighty elf-freinds of old, Hador, and Hurin, and Turin, and Beren himself were asembled together, your seat would be among them."

Tolkien is one of the greatest Bardic storytellers of all time, and if Taliesien, and Ovid, and Homer were assembeld together, his seat would be among them. Without any need to draw Biblical parallels!