Quote:
Originally Posted by Nikkolas
No, Eru set out with genocide in mind.
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In context, the
Akallabęth is a retelling of an admixture of the biblical flood story and the Greek
Atlantis (or as Tolkien called it
Atalantë -- Quenyan for "Downfallen"); therefore, it contains Plato's reverence for the advanced culture of the Atlanteans, and the biblical references to the antediluvian world with its wickedness and blood sacrifice, as well as Noah and the faithful's redemption, and the destruction of the Gibborim and Nephilim, giants, warriors and conquering heroes of great renown (great descriptors of Numenoreans at the time).
Tolkien was a masterful synthesizer of world myth, so you have to take the events in context to an overall synthesized cosmology of Middle-earth. Some posters want to take bits and pieces of the mythos and blow them out of proportion, rather than looking at the tale macrocosmically, or even in a historiographical sense, dragging post-modernistic literary and psychological views that are frankly not germane to the manner in which the story was written.