Silmarillion - Akallabêth

[Galin]

Hmm, as the tumbleweeds tumble by I would like to speak to this section a bit more...

Christopher Tolkien thinks that a note his father wrote many years later explains how he regarded the different accounts: The Fall of Númenor relates 'Elvish tradition', The Drowning of Anadûnê 'Mannish tradition', and the Akallabêth, which draws on both of the others, 'Mixed Dúnedanic tradition' (Sauron Defeated, pp. 406-7)'. Reader's Guide p. 674

This is certainly true, but for my purposes I would add that there are other considerations here: in the note I quoted above, Tolkien merely noted that there are three traditions -- in other words, he himself did not specifically comment on any version of The Fall of Numenor. And while a text called The Fall of Numenor might correctly correspond to Elvish tradition, we don't necessarily have the version as written.

Back when The Fall of Numenor was written it was specifically flat world and Elvish, but in the later DA it was the Elves of the West who taught the Numenoreans that the World was round (thus always round). So my proposition includes that while an Elvish tradition could be called The Fall of Numenor, or by default this is the title left to represent an Elvish version, it had not yet been rewritten as an Elvish round-world tradition, and thus was not suitable -- as it stood -- to truly represent what the Elves of the West knew (and taught in DA).

However DA was suitable as it stood, even if an 'oldish' text by the 1960s, and so it goes into the envelope at this time with a 'which is good' and so on written on it -- because it needed no great revsion to easily sink into place with Tolkien's later ideas.