[narfforc]

Maybe I am missing the point here, but going back to original reason for this post, if Tolkien was such a religious man, why would he steal things from what is said to be the word of God, surely this would be sacrilege and he would be condemned by his own religious community. To my mind the easier route to writing a book would be through his other love in life Norse mythology, if things are similar along the way, that is because most religions are. You cannot put your hand on your heart and swear: This is what Tolkien was thinking of when he wrote that. Tolkien could have had a multitude of things on his mind when he was writing. The question was did Tolkien steal from the bible, I say no, because he wouldn't, if the question had been: are there similarities between the bible and LotR I say yes, but there are also with many things. People will say :Ah but Tolkien was a Catholic, so he is using that when writing a book, however he was also born in South African, this doesn't mean that there is some form of aparthied in the book, and we would all be outraged if some group came forward with the weakest of links and claimed Tolkien a neo nazi, which he clearly was not.