Ok, so I got dragged back in...
As far as I'm aware Tolkien hardly ever at made any one-to one connections between his fictional world & the Bible, merely stating on various occasions that something in his writings was 'like' a Biblical event, or
in his opinion 'played out' a certain Christian truth (he did refer to Satan as Sauron occasionally, so it seems the two were interchangeable in his mind. As were Orcs & men with chainsaws - personally I think both analogies are flawed & certainly don't stand up to scrutiny). Certainly he was pleased when correspondents drew analogies with Christianity, but one suspects that was because so many readers & critics denied there was any Christian meaning there at all.
Out of respect for the author I think we should refrain from stating 'what Tolkien believed' about this or that. He rejected any allegorical interpretation, & only reluctantly accepted applicability because it was inevitable readers would find their own meanings & interpret the work in their own way. The repeated pleas on his part for people not to interpret the thing, or allegorise it in any way were perfectly understandable in that he did not want a particular interpretation or 'meaning' to be imposed on it, & he himself to be held responsible for a particular 'teaching' or ideological stance. I suspect he would have been appalled by all the books & essays out there which purport to reveal the truth behind LotR.
Now, as someone who is open to the possibility of 'Truth' & suspects that Tolkien was perfectly correct when he agreed that he had 'broken through the veil' I have no problem at all with the idea that a work like LotR can give us a glimpse of something 'more' (or even 'Something More'). Where I get irritated is when people start telling me exactly what that something more is, & that the key to understanding LotR is to read the Bible (or the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita, etc, etc).
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Macalure
I agree so far with the arguments, though not on all occasions with the tone, of davem.
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'He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases'
Lewis Carroll
