Quote:
Originally Posted by Tar Elenion
Yes. I would rather they depicted the sun and moon in existence at the same time as the Two Trees as per LotR and The Hobbit.
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This would mean pulling material not just from the Silmarillion, but from HoME texts - the Appendices are crystal clear that the Two Trees "gave light to the land of the Valar", so they would have to use the Dome(s) of Varda to make sense of it, and it/they isn't/aren't in Silm or UT.
Without invoking the idea that the Valar just shoved a giant lid on Valinor because, by golly, they'd had this idea for shiny trees and didn't want to let a ball of flaming gas ruin it, it's perfectly possible to reconcile the LotR and Hobbit texts you reference with the "young Sun" worldview:
- The Hobbit is written in Bilbo's editorial voice, and was written before he read the Elvish tales; Hobbit folk-tales make no mention of the creation of the Sun and Moon. (It is clear that Tolkien was thinking of the Dome of Varda/Melkor's smokes cover the Sun story here, but that doesn't mean it's the only possible interpretation.)
- Durin: there was no stain on the Moon because there was no Moon. The "light of sun and star and moon" is either a later metaphor (like the Winged Sun on Finwe's heraldic device), or an indication that Durin ruled until after the Sunrise.
- Galadriel says "beyond" and means in time.
- Gandalf is explicitly covering a broad timeline in his riddle - he mentions rings, which is the mid-Second Age! Or: he's referring to mountains that are now under the Moon. Or: he's saying that Treebeard and the Ents came to Fangorn after the Moonrise, leaving the lands where iron and hewing and woe were found. (Heck, Woe Was Wrought by Melkor before the land was even solid!) Or even: 'when young was mountain under moon' is a Rohirric idiom not otherwise attested.
And there are references which imply (but again do not state) the Silmarillion cosmology:
- The "stain on the moon" from the Durin rhyme is only ever explained in terms of Tilion and his ship, not a giant orbiting rock.
- There are explicit references to a Man in the Moon throughout Hobbit lore (and indeed a woman in the Sun).
- The "Sunless Years" reference from Gildor's song.
- Tom Bombadil talks of "the young Sun" shining down on battles on the Barrow-Downs.
- Bilbo's song tells of Earendil flying behind the sun; for a Silmaril to be visible at that distance the Sun must be pretty close (or the Silmarils once lit the entirety of Beleriand!).
- Haldir mentions that the light of the Sun is not as it was aforetimes, which actually sounds most like one of the
very old legends about the death of Arien. It definitely doesn't make sense with an Old Sun model, unless Haldir is complaining that the sun isn't washed-out and obscured enough. (Perhaps he is English and longing for grey summers?)
And that's only from Fellowship! I'm sure you could find more in the other volumes. This isn't an obvious "the Sun always existed" situation by any means.
hS