How close is the published The Silmarillion to JRRT's Silmarillion?

[mhagain]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Your listing of personal details on which you personally disagree with Christopher Tolkien’s Silmarillion tradition contradicts your statement:

Based on that I don't think we've much choice but to accept the published Silmarillion as being anything other than in accordance with JRRT's wishes, which distils the debate down to whether or not it's what JRRT would have done had he lived.

You seemingly do not accept some of Christopher Tolkien’s decisions. I would say you have a perfect right to choose not to accept Christopher Tolkien’s decisions and have already said so. But Tolkien’s decision to change his Silmarillion tradition before the return of the Noldor to make it into partly Mannish legend has the result that often there will be two contradictory versions of any legend, that of the Silmarillion and that of the Wise, both of which Tolkien updated.

The contradiction is only apparent.

I accept CT's decisions at the time he made them, in the early/mid 70s, and accept them as being in accordance with JRRT's explicit wish that CT take over the reins and do what he wanted.

It's very well documented that CT subsequently came to view many of those decisions as incorrect, so we're not dealing with a single opinion formed at a single point in time here, and I would have hoped that would have been obvious.