Quote:
Originally Posted by VarTalman
Hey folks,
We have from the Bible an account of Jonah being sent to the great city outside the land of Israel. He is sent from the God of the Sea as is Tuor. He takes a hidden journey in a fish to the shore and goes to Nineveh preaching profound inspired words greater than man's speech. The city is great and requires a three-day journey through it - Jonah goes preaching the word. There is also parallel that the king acknowledges that this wiry prophet has been sent from God to the lost city...
I imagine Tolkien had a tough time finishing this story because Jonah ends with a city saved and God's prophet complaining. Makes for a tough ending to so well-told a tale.
I believe Tolkien's muse is the Bible account beginning to end. These unfinished stories could be various retellings of biblical accounts in Middle-Earth lore. If this is the key, their endings could potentially be deciphered.
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Greetings,
VarTalman,
I've never made a connection between Tuor's tale and Jonah's before, and thinking about it I can definitely see some connections. Voronwë coming ashore miraculously, alone out of a whole crew, is definitely evocative--though different enough that I would certainly hesitate to say inspired, let alone a retelling--and coupled with the fact that someone in the tale is being sent as an emissary to a doomed city, certainly makes points of comparison worth exploring.
But that's a long way from saying "Tolkien's muse is the Bible account beginning to end," and on that point I would have to protest vehemently. Two major elements of Jonah's tall are drastically lacking:
1.) Tuor and Voronwë are both willing to do Ulmo's bidding, whereas the first act of Jonah's story--and the whole reason the giant fish is involved in the first place--is because Jonah does not want to go to Nineveh. While a touch of reluctance (but nothing to the extent of Jonah) MIGHT be argued for Voronwë, I don't see how we can really say that about Tuor.
2.) Nineveh repents. Now, there is the side issue that Ulmo isn't sending a messenger to Gondolin because Gondolin is full of sinners, but I'll grant you that he IS trying to save them, so the parallel exists; but Gondolin does NOT heed the message of Ulmo. Nineveh is saved, but the destruction prophesied for Gondolin most certainly comes about--and you can't say that Tolkien was going to rewrite this version of the story to be more in accord with the Biblical tale. Not only is there not a scrap of evidence he ever countenanced changing one of the major tales of the legendarium so drastically, Gondolin's fall was already "in print" in
The Hobbit and in the finished (though not yet published)
Lord of the Rings--and this was to be part of a Silmarillion that he still hoped to see published WITH
The Lord of the Rings.
So, as a blanket statement, the idea that Tolkien was working with the Book of Jonah as his primary inspiration is one that I have to reject. But I could certainly have been in the leafmould of influences on him, and if it is, perhaps more parallels could be unearthed. The last act of Jonah's story, where he has to learn his second lesson of the story, that God is willing to save all people--even the pagan, hated, Ninevites--seems to have no parallel in any version of Tuor's tale, unless it is in the fact that Ulmo contemplates helping the Gondolindrim at all, since they ought to fall under the Curse.