I think Tolkien's recharacterization of The Silmarillion as a mostly Mannish work solved his problem.
The revision to The Hobbit was, in my opinion, done in order to take out an explicit mention of a time before a sun. . . although that said, I think we can add what I'll call the Treebeard Tradition* from The Lord of the Rings, which to my mind, agrees with the Western Elvish traditon of a pre-existing Sun.
*Treebeard's story of the Entwives read in consideration of his chronology regarding both the Great Darkness and his reference to the Elves passing over Sea.
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