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Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba
It would be a mad middle earth place… cool!
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And, as tought from childhood as 'reality of this world' seem to lot of people boring ordinary thing, who would turn to internet message boards and discuss works of T.B.B.Foolhardy, where they had no Valar, no elves at all, but some strange beings named Progressives and such, where there were no Trees to light the sky but bulbs of Gas. Cool!
Though screens may have come out to be round, after all.
If seriously, the question is quite a hard one.
As Tolkien puts it, the Silmarillion (corpus) is pre-Christian, it can not replace New Testament and Christianity, but the switch would have worked in case if only Old Testament were to be replaced. Than prophecy of Christ's birth would be ascribed to Finrod and Andreth
Sil would not replace other systems, and there would have been no impact on, say, Buddhism or Induism - those are too different to be easily replaced. If there were only Silmarillion among the Sacred Texts to go on, I think people who now belong to Eastern confessions would write them anew.
Islam may have been slightly different, as it was introduced in 6th century AD, and its moral system is synthesis of both Judaism and Christianity. But not significantly, I suppose, for Muhammad would take moral imperatives, not particular details out of it, and imperatives of Silmarillion comply with those of Judaic Law and Christianity. Instead of Abraam there would probably be Aragorn though, and term saracins, applied to Arabs (With the meaning of Sarah's Dogs - descendants of Abraam's children Sarah threw out) would become arwencins, probably (with an assumption that some other wife there were for Aragorn for those other children to be born in the first place)
Common names of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be different. Probably, Greek ones would keep their place, and I would still be George, but
davem definitely would become Melben
That all with a proviso that even with changed texts to go on, all the history were to repeat itself in the same locations - starting in Palestine and going in circles around. If it were to start in North-West Europe, Numenoreans playing the role of Chosen People, than instead of Jerusalem, crusades would go other way round, probably to some town on western shore of France or Spain, the role of Muslims would play some other ethnic group (basques?). Not England – Crusade on spiritual fuel is not efficient, the town must have been wealthy too, and England’s wealth comes to be there only after some form of capitalistic society begins to evolve.
Well, I can go on endlessly, but let us turn to, as Duchess liked to tell Alice, morals of it:
There would be no difference for man as a man, and no improvement of society . It all comes down to
‘that’s how human beings are’. Differences of religious belief are almost always traceable down to power-trip of this or that leader back in history. There are shia’ and suna’ in Islam, because after Muhammad’s death two parties wanted their candidate to become a khalif. There are Eastern and Western Churches because Patriarch and Pope were both arrogant men.
Probably, the position of women would have been better. But again, maybe not. For disparity is not caused by beliefs, rather beliefs and codes come around to form a theoretical base for already existing disparity.
Merely silly theological questions would be different though – instead of ‘how many angels can dance on a pinhead’ there would be ‘how exactly pointy were elven ears’ or ‘how many fathoms long where balrog wings, if there were any’
And with that, let me, whatever my personal feelings, second the proposal of moving current thread to Mirth
cheers