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 Ainulindalė 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, Bėthius (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.
