I haven't had time to review the latest posts in detail (and will have to wait until probably next Saturday to do so) but I wanted to pop in to comment on one thing.
Findegil wrote:
Quote:
|
The first way out of this dilemma I thought about comes from these passages from MT VII and UT, Istari: ‘He[ Manwë], like Melkor, practically never is seen or heard of outside or far away from his own halls and permanent residence.’ ‘Manwë will not descend from the Mountain until Dagor Dagorath, and the coming of the End, when Melkor returns.’ At least the UT text is seemingly later than every text we work with here including MT VI. Taken to be literary truth that would mean Manwë is completely out of the campaign against Utumno and thus the first possible meeting of Manwë and Melkor is at council.
|
I think you are misreading the context of that statement from UT. The point of view of those essays always seems to be that of the late Third Age, or at least, long after the First Age. It does not say "Manwe <i>did</i> not descend from the Mountain . . ."; it says "Manwe <i>will</i> not descend . . ." It is a statement about the future, not the past. To take this to mean that once his halls were built on Taniquetil, he never left them seems to me to be absurd, and I certainly don't think we should be editing texts to <i>remove</i> him from the Battle of the Powers.
I realize that this is somewhat tangential to the main thrust of your proposal, and again, I'm looking forward to reviewing that when I can, but I just wanted to comment on this one point.