Numenoreans attacking the Valar

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

In Letter 156, referring to this very situation, Tolkien said:

The Valar had no real answer to this monstrous rebellion -- for the Children of God were not under their ultimate jurisdiction: they were not allowed to destroy them, or coerce them with any 'divine' display of the powers they held over the physical world. They appealed to God, and a catastrophic 'change of plan' occurred.

The only ones of the Ainur who do destroy the Children and coerce them with "divine" displays of power are those who have fallen into evil ways: Melkor, Sauron, Saruman, the Balrogs, etc. I do not know of any instance in which one of the "non-fallen" Ainur did so (maybe it could be argued that Osse did so with his stormy nature, but I don't know that he did so with the express purpose of destroying any of the Children). Melkor could be hurt by the weapons of the Children because he had invested so much of his power into the dominance of the physical world, he became irrevocably tied to his incarnate body (this is discussed somewhere in Morgoth's Ring, I believe).

As to the matter of the Numenorean armada being "the greatest army the world had ever seen," I feel this has to be viewed with something of a grain of salt -- rather like the "Last Alliance of Elves and Men." The latter occurred at the end of the Second Age -- and yet there was another alliance of Elves and Men during the Third Age, to fight the Witch King of Angmar. It could be said, perhaps, that the Alliance in the Second Age was the last time actual kingdoms of Elves and Men would ally themselves against a common foe, but I find a distinct ambiguity in the use of the term "last." Just as I find some feeling of ambiguity in the term "greatest." How does one define greatness -- or, perhaps more specifically, how did the chronicler of the event define it? If it was written by a Man (one of the faithful who survived, perhaps), then they could not have been alive to see any of the armies that fought outside their limited lifespan, and thus draw comparisons. If it was written by an Elf, then it's unlikely he saw Ar-Pharazon's armada with his own eyes, since Elves had been banned from Numenor some years before. To top it off, how did anyone in Middle-earth know what had happened in Valinor? After the world was sundered, there was no travel between Aman and ME, and precious little communication (unless it came through Cirdan's contact with Ulmo and Osse, or later, the Istari). Who told the writer of the account precisely what the Valar had done?

Well, I'm not really arguing with it. I'm just pointing out that there are a number of seemingly contradictory or inexplicable things in these tales. Sometimes you just have to take what is said with that grain of salt, and let it go. There's no way to resolve all the myriad issues an enquiring mind can conjure up.

Hey, post 300. Cool!