Who or What is Tom Bombadil?

[Raynor]

the Ents were before the Elves wernt they

I wouldn't say so:

Originally Posted by Of Aule and Yavanna, Silmarillion

When the Children awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the kelvar and the olvar, and some will dwell therein, and be held in reverence, and their just anger shall be feared

The ents don't come sooner than the elves, but pretty much at about the same time (if not later).

[Elu Ancalime]

and they will go among the kelvar and the olvar

For some reason I always had the implication in my mind that the Ents went to Middle Earth the all the animals and plants soon after the Aule-Eru incident, when Yavanna said the forest would need protection from enviromental degradation from the dwarves, and they just kinda hung out until they elves came along.
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[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

In the early drafts of LotR, Tom calls himself 'Aborigine', not 'Eldest'. As Christopher Tolkien observes in his footnotes, the likely times for Tom to come into being are before the flight of Melkor and Ungoliant or, more likely, during the time in which Melkor was banished in the Void. Since Tom remembers the dark beneath the stars when it was fearless, Varda's star-kindling must have taken place before his memory begins, and therefore he was not alive when the Dark Lord originally entered Arda, first of all the Valar. That basically blows all of the 'Tom is an aspect of Eru', 'Tom is the spirit of Middle-earth' and 'Tom is a forgotten Maia' theories I've seen out of the water and leaves us with a character who is an anomaly. He's not exactly an Elf, certainly not a Dwarf, and while he could be a Man (the most likely explanation in my opinion), his great longevity is difficult to explain. In his letters, Tolkien points out that Middle-earth is an imperfectly conceived universe, and all but tells his correspondant that Bombadil can't be made to fit at all.

Personally Bombadil strikes me as Adamic, which might explain his long life. We might, I suppose, take him to be an image of unfallen Man, blessed with length of years and a disdain for worldly concerns, but even that would take some explaining, since he was in the lands about the Shire before the Elves first passed through. Tolkien was probably right: philosophizing does not improve him. My instinct is to accept the character as a mystery and mark up all inconsistencies with the main mythology to the vagueries of the branching acquisitive theme. After all, Tom was conceived long before he was made a part of Middle-earth, and it's perhaps inevitable that some of the joins should still show.

[Aiwendil]

Squatter wrote:

Since Tom remembers the dark beneath the stars when it was fearless, Varda's star-kindling must have taken place before his memory begins, and therefore he was not alive when the Dark Lord originally entered Arda, first of all the Valar.

Why? It seems to me that his memory could have begun before the star-kindling even if he remembers that later age. I remember yesterday even though my memory begins before yesterday. Another point to be noted is that there were stars, dimmer and more feeble, before Varda's great star-kindling.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

It seems to me that his memory could have begun before the star-kindling even if he remembers that later age

This is true, but it would seem odd for Tolkien to write some dialogue that seems intended to demonstrate a character's great age but which makes no reference at all to his presumed earlier memories.

As for the kindling of the stars, my knowledge of the Silmarillion material never was that amazing; perhaps it's time that I read it again.

My main point remains the same: Tom Bombadil is none of the above: he's a character who had nothing to do with Middle-earth at the outset, and who therefore was never assigned a satisfactory place in that reality. To look for one seems to be to forget that Tolkien's Middle-earth is invented, and that he freely admitted its imperfection. My reaction to some of the more common Tolkien imponderables has always been that they tend to be totally disproportionate, concentrating on really quite unimportant details of the story. Tom Bombadil's origins are less boring than Legolas' hair or Balrog wings, but there's still no answer, and surely his role in the narrative is clear enough. Does it really matter that we can't fit him neatly into Tolkien's world? I also wanted to point out the opinion of Christopher Tolkien, who is quite definite about the two alternatives I outlined in my previous post. My own view is very nearly 'who cares?', but when I turned up that information in HoME VI I remembered this and other discussions.

[Raynor]

Another point to be noted is that there were stars, dimmer and more feeble, before Varda's great star-kindling.

It is worth noting that the these first stars seem to be made also by Varda, as seen in the Silmarillion/Annals of Aman:

Originally Posted by Of the begining of days

But as the ages drew on to the hour appointed by Iluvatar for the coming of the Firstborn, Middle-earth lay in a twilight beneath the stars that Varda had wrought in the ages forgotten of her labours in Ea

(although in the great reshaping of Myths transformed, HoME X, Tolkien states that she couldn't have done that, since the 'general' stars do not concern "the Valar of Arda").

[A_Brandybuck]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

This is true, but it would seem odd for Tolkien to write some dialogue that seems intended to demonstrate a character's great age but which makes no reference at all to his presumed earlier memories.

Under the circumstance, that the Professor himself said, that good old Tom is an enigma, and under the circumstance, that Tom is still an enigma for us, because decades of discussions have brought no result, I would say, that nothing is odd concerning Tolkien's formulation. ;-)

[Elu Ancalime]

Well, of course he had to develop Tom. Frodo and Co. couldnt have met Mr Enigma, for then he couldnt have development of all. So while Tolkien created him as an enigma, I believe that he developed his character to be an enigma, also. So he is Enigma-twofold, in his literary concept, and actual characterzation. There can be no rebuke against his literary standard.
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