Why not Ecthelion?

[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Galin

Well more than one possibility makes things more complicated, especially since, included within my statement is the idea that not everyone has read HME -- that alone makes it a 'bit' complicated in my opinion, at least as far as discussion goes.

Not reading all the source material does not make things more complicated. It just means that you don't have the full information.

Yes let's bring canon considerations into the matter. That never complicates things

Again only if you want to make things difficult. Tolkien was explicit with what he wrote in his will. Whether you or I like it or not does not matter. Christoper Tolkien has actually greatly restrained his hand and could have done far more with the power his father left him.

I never say above that by not revising a given passage containing many Balrogs 'proves' that Tolkien was of two minds, but rather that it doesn't exactly make the matter as cut and dry as you seem to be trying to make it now...

'Sauron came against Orodreth, the warden of the tower, with a host of Balrogs.' Of the Ruin of Beleriand And the Fall of Fingolfin [Christopher Tolkien edited this to: '... named Gorthaur, came against Orodreth, the warden of the tower upon Tol Sirion.' Of The Ruin Of Beleriand]

But not only did Tolkien not revise 'host of Balrogs' in the early 1950s -- while making revisions to this same passage [passage 143], Christopher Tolkien even notes a revision to passage 143 on LQ2, which puts this revision [even if more minor than the early 1950s revision], in the same time phase as the '3 or 7' Balrog note...

... at least generally, so we don't know which comes later, the revision to 143 or the marginal note, and now one has to argue that Tolkien maybe just missed this reference, even on LQ2. Well, maybe is part of the point: it helps complicate matters 'a bit' because people will have different opinions about how to view these things.

Tolkien is not perfect and is not going to notice every little detail We have to look at the grand picture and we get to my next point.

I haven't said otherwise. Still it's a fact [and not that you said otherwise] that after Tolkien wrote the Moria passage he still imagined very many Balrogs existing in Middle-earth in the First Age.

Where is the proof in this? As he made the Balrog more powerful he was probably considering the change at that point. It's quite apparent that a host of Balrogs does not work. One Balrog alone was enough to defeat Gandalf.

Well, all I said was that someone else raised this, and that I thought it very unlikely myself.

In any case the point there was, in response to you bringing up this statement from JRRT about Glorfindel, was that Tolkien's note about Glorfindel's fight with the demon possibly needing revision tells us nothing about Balrog numbers.

Yes and The Lord of the Rings is about a short guy trying to get rid of some evil jewelry

Look we can see all the information we have including Tolkien's notes the power of the Balrogs etc and we get a picture. I don't see any contradiction to the updated note and you have not convinced me it is remotely complicated. We will have to agree to disagree here once more.

[Yregwyn]

Well, heres another way to look at it. Even if the Balrogs were as Durin's Bane was portrayed in the movie, there could have been a great number of them. It would just mean that the Eldar of the 1st age were that much tougher. You cant really go by Gandalf getting killed by one if this was the case, 1st the elfs of old would have been greater then Gandalf was in 3rd age as a Istari, thats not saying he couldnt have just snapped his fingers and blew it to pieces in his true form, if he wanted to. Or being able to do the same to the any of the eldar from the 1st age either. Its saying that he wasnt allowed to... or that he didnt have that kind of power in the mortal form. Its just another way to think about it and include both views of the Balrogs. Like this also, i think if Fingolfin had ran into Gothmog on his way to challenge Morgoth he would have absolutly destroyed him, and even Sauron would have been hard pressed for that matter, In my opinion. Dont burn me at the stake please. Its just an idea, thinking out loud it you will.

[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Yregwyn

Well, heres another way to look at it. Even if the Balrogs were as Durin's Bane was portrayed in the movie, there could have been a great number of them. It would just mean that the Eldar of the 1st age were that much tougher. You cant really go by Gandalf getting killed by one if this was the case, 1st the elfs of old would have been greater then Gandalf was in 3rd age as a Istari, thats not saying he couldnt have just snapped his fingers and blew it to pieces in his true form, if he wanted to. Or being able to do the same to the any of the eldar from the 1st age either. Its saying that he wasnt allowed to... or that he didnt have that kind of power in the mortal form. Its just another way to think about it and include both views of the Balrogs. Like this also, i think if Fingolfin had ran into Gothmog on his way to challenge Morgoth he would have absolutly destroyed him, and even Sauron would have been hard pressed for that matter, In my opinion. Dont burn me at the stake please. Its just an idea, thinking out loud it you will.

Elrond and Galadriel were a match for any first age elves. The Balrog was still a huge threat to them. The first age Elves were really no stronger than those of the 2nd Age or even the third Age. The First Age just had more of them.

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

Again only if you want to make things difficult. Tolkien was explicit with what he wrote in his will. Whether you or I like it or not does not matter. Christoper Tolkien has actually greatly restrained his hand and could have done far more with the power his father left him.

Here's the thing. There's no such thing as 'canon'. Some people (including you, I gather) want to talk about the fictional world described in the published Silmarillion. Others want to talk about the fictional world as envisioned by JRRT at some particular point in time. Some want to talk about a hypothetical final form that the Legendarium would have taken if Tolkien had lived longer and prepared the Silmarillion for publication. Still others want to talk about the whole corpus of texts without privileging any one version of the story.

None of these groups is right or wrong, and arguments between them are (it seems obvious) completely pointless. And yet a lot of arguments about Tolkien's work do in fact stem from the (often unrecognized) fact that the participants are taking different approaches. It's the equivalent of those arguments that appear to be about something substantive but are really just semantics, the people involved having different definitions for the terms they are using.

In other words, the issue isn't that Galin or anyone else disagrees about the authority (whatever that might mean) of the published Silmarillion. It's that they are interested in a different question.

[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Here's the thing. There's no such thing as 'canon'. Some people (including you, I gather) want to talk about the fictional world described in the published Silmarillion. Others want to talk about the fictional world as envisioned by JRRT at some particular point in time. Some want to talk about a hypothetical final form that the Legendarium would have taken if Tolkien had lived longer and prepared the Silmarillion for publication. Still others want to talk about the whole corpus of texts without privileging any one version of the story.

None of these groups is right or wrong, and arguments between them are (it seems obvious) completely pointless. And yet a lot of arguments about Tolkien's work do in fact stem from the (often unrecognized) fact that the participants are taking different approaches. It's the equivalent of those arguments that appear to be about something substantive but are really just semantics, the people involved having different definitions for the terms they are using.

In other words, the issue isn't that Galin or anyone else disagrees about the authority (whatever that might mean) of the published Silmarillion. It's that they are interested in a different question.

Some people just like to pick and chose what they like from different time periods. At the end of the day Tolkien never finished his work and after painstakingly going through his notes, Christoper was able to give us a coherent story. This is the only story we are going to get and it's the only story that fits with other published works.

The issue at hand is they disagree with the authority of Christopher Tolkien, because I don't see people arguing that Aragorn should really have been a Hobbit named Trotter or any of the countless other ideas that Tolkien dropped.

We can never know what Tolkien would have written had he lived, because he changed his mind about a lot of things, but we can know what the story that fits the other published works tells us.

Tolkien's early works are a great read and enjoyable on their own, but Sauron being a cat is not something that works with LOTR nor does Beren being an elf.

[gondowe]

Christopher is the fact maker of the modern Tolkien interest, and was due to the publishes Sil. Without it we didn't have UT and HOME. I reverence Chris almost as much as his father because without his edit work we didn't have the world of Arda that we have now, only (of course not less) TH and TLOTR (with TRGEO).
Himself was sorry of the published Silmarillion, Edited with hurry due to the pressure of the editorial. In HOME and think in other place don't remember, he said that some many "editions" could have been treated in other way but he must let stand the work as it is. And took the decision of publish the woks in its original context.
Some people (like me) want to edit a dreamed Sil or in a greater way a Compilation of the texts of Arda for a personal taste, and share with the people that think like us, but we know that some many others wants the pub Sil and UT and HOME as they are; ok, no problem, all friends. We have both versions.

Greetings

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

At the end of the day Tolkien never finished his work and after painstakingly going through his notes, Christoper was able to give us a coherent story. This is the only story we are going to get and it's the only story that fits with other published works.

No, we have already gotten lots of stories. There is no sense in which the published Silmarillion is 'the only story we are going to get'. It was the first one, and it was the only one that was published as a compiled narrative without textual notes or commentary, but those are the only things that set it apart from the texts given in HoMe (which, it's worth noting, Christopher Tolkien also saw fit to publish).

It is also not the only story that fits with other published works. Some of the HoMe texts agree with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Others, to varying degrees, don't. The published Silmarillion is not somehow the unique version of the story that is allowed by the published works.

The issue at hand is they disagree with the authority of Christopher Tolkien, because I don't see people arguing that Aragorn should really have been a Hobbit named Trotter or any of the countless other ideas that Tolkien dropped.

There's no 'should' about it. There are only facts about what was written in different texts at different times.

Most people are more interested in the published version of The Lord of the Rings than in the early drafts, so most discussions about that work are naturally going to be about the published version. On the other hand, many people are more interested in the various HoMe texts than in the published Silmarillion, so it's natural that they will want to discuss them and won't necessarily be that interested in what the published version has to say about the topics they are discussing.

What, after all, does 'authority' mean in this context? Does it mean that the published version is the only one that people should be allowed to discuss? Obviously not. Does it mean that people discussing the HoMe texts must stop their discussion when someone provides an answer from the published version? Again, that would seem ridiculous. Does it mean that people ought to be more interested in the published version than in the other texts? No, because you can't dictate people's interests like that. Does it mean that the published Silmarillion is the 'right' or 'true' version? It can't, because this is a fictional world we're talking about and there is no 'truth' about it. One is forced to conclude that 'authority' is just not a meaningful concept in this context.

Sorry if I'm steering this thread into canonicity territory; but I really think that fundamentally, people are arguing past each other here due to their interests lying in different places.

[Morthoron]

The reason is simple: Glorfindel had to leave Valinor and the Halls of Mandos because Ecthelion was incessantly teasing him. After all, Ecthelion had killed multiple balrogs, while Glorfindel had merely tripped and fell of a cliff.

Pfffttt! Where's the epic heroism of that?

[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

No, we have already gotten lots of stories. There is no sense in which the published Silmarillion is 'the only story we are going to get'. It was the first one, and it was the only one that was published as a compiled narrative without textual notes or commentary, but those are the only things that set it apart from the texts given in HoMe (which, it's worth noting, Christopher Tolkien also saw fit to publish).

It is also not the only story that fits with other published works. Some of the HoMe texts agree with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Others, to varying degrees, don't. The published Silmarillion is not somehow the unique version of the story that is allowed by the published works.

Christopher Tolkien has admitted he made mistakes in the Silmarillion and I accept his corrections. I accept what Christopher Tolkien has put together and when he confirms that a matter was his father's final words.

There's no 'should' about it. There are only facts about what was written in different texts at different times.

Most people are more interested in the published version of The Lord of the Rings than in the early drafts, so most discussions about that work are naturally going to be about the published version. On the other hand, many people are more interested in the various HoMe texts than in the published Silmarillion, so it's natural that they will want to discuss them and won't necessarily be that interested in what the published version has to say about the topics they are discussing.

What, after all, does 'authority' mean in this context? Does it mean that the published version is the only one that people should be allowed to discuss? Obviously not. Does it mean that people discussing the HoMe texts must stop their discussion when someone provides an answer from the published version? Again, that would seem ridiculous. Does it mean that people ought to be more interested in the published version than in the other texts? No, because you can't dictate people's interests like that. Does it mean that the published Silmarillion is the 'right' or 'true' version? It can't, because this is a fictional world we're talking about and there is no 'truth' about it. One is forced to conclude that 'authority' is just not a meaningful concept in this context.

Sorry if I'm steering this thread into canonicity territory; but I really think that fundamentally, people are arguing past each other here due to their interests lying in different places.

Discussing Tolkien's early ideas or notions is fine, but I disagree when people try and argue that those text are equally valid when discussing the final story. I very much enjoy hearing how Huan and Sauron originated the conflict we see today between cats and dogs, but I don't agree with using that to discuss the legendarium as we know it.

The host of Balrogs just does not fit with the story as we have it now. There is just no way that Tuor would be killing Balrogs five at a time. This is probably a ky reason why Tolkien cut the number.

[Yregwyn]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

Elrond and Galadriel were a match for any first age elves. The Balrog was still a huge threat to them. The first age Elves were really no stronger than those of the 2nd Age or even the third Age. The First Age just had more of them.

I was jusy saying what if for conversation's sake..... but i disagree Galadriel and Elrond were not a match for "any" 1st age elf. I dont think either of them could match Maedros, Fingon,Turgon, Finrod (who was Galadriels big brother) and there peers not to meantion the likes of Feanor or Fingolfin. Dont get me wrong im not downing either of them but it said that when Gil-Galed died Galadriel was the fairest and greatest left in ME, and he was (in sil which Christopher said was a mistake) Fingons son but in later works he was supposed to be Odoreths son. Either way she wouldnt have been a match for Fingon or Odoreth and apparently Gil-Galad either. she was greater then Elrond since she has seen the undying lands also. There was a big difference in the elfs who had seen the light of the Valar and those who had not. So yes there was a huge difference in 1st and 3rd age elfs. Especially with the Sindar and Noldar lines.

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by Yregwyn

I dont think either of them could match Maedros, Fingon,Turgon, Finrod (who was Galadriels big brother) and there peers not to meantion the likes of Feanor or Fingolfin.

If we look to the Unfinished Tales it is said of Galadriel in conjunction with Fëanor that they were the greatest Eldar in Aman [Part ll, ch. 4] She is said the possess "the equal if unlike endowments of Fëanor." Of those endowments it is said in the Silmarillion and in Morgoth's Ring:

Originally Posted by Silmarillion, ch. 11

Fëanor was made the mightiest in all parts of body and mind, in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and in subtlety alike, of all the Children of Illuvatar.

Originally Posted by MR, p. 236

he was mighty in body and in all the skills of the body, and supreme among the Eldar in eagerness and strength and subtlety of mind

Originally Posted by MR, p. 247

Aulë nameth Fëanor the greatest of the Eldar, and in potency that is true.

Originally Posted by MR, p. 240

This child is the greatest in gifts that hath arisen or shall arise among the Eldar.

She is compared with the greatest/mightiest of the Noldor, "his likeness has never again appeared in Arda... Thus ended the mightiest of the Noldor" [Sil, ch. 13, p. 125] which includes not only herself, but all the other princes who followed Fëanor and Fingolfin into Beleriand that you mentioned.

Lastly there is a quote in UT that compares Galadriel to the loremasters who're described in note 23 of The People's of Middle-earth.

Originally Posted by Note 23

Nor were the 'loremasters' a separate guild of gentle scribes, soon burned by the Orks of Angband upon pyres of books. They were mostly even as Fëanor, the greatest, kings, princes and warriors, such as the valiant captains of Gondolin

Not all of them were as such but it is interesting that generally who they are compared to are Fëanor and/or Gondolin's captains, such as Ecthelion. So I'd say that Galadriel imo was clearly a match for any of these guys, and certainly their better.

Originally Posted by Yregwyn

there was a huge difference in 1st and 3rd age elfs. Especially with the Sindar and Noldar lines.

Not necessarily a huge difference in innate abilities. Some of the Sindar in fact grew to become powerful.

Originally Posted by Silmarillion, ch. 12

Only in the realm of Doriath, whose queen Melian was of the kindred of the Valar, did the Sindar come near to match the Calaquendi of the Blessed Realm.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

Not reading all the source material does not make things more complicated. It just means that you don't have the full information.

I said it makes the discussion more complicated. And obviously it does when one reader is looking at or raising a quote that he or she is not aware has been edited.

Again only if you want to make things difficult. Tolkien was explicit with what he wrote in his will. Whether you or I like it or not does not matter. Christoper Tolkien has actually greatly restrained his hand and could have done far more with the power his father left him.

Did Tolkien explicitly state in his will that if CJRT chose to publish a single volume version of the Silmarillion [which was not what CJRT originally intended incidentally] that he [JRRT] would consider it 'canon'? Does CJRT ever claim the constructed version is intended to be the 'canonical' version?

Not that I'm aware of, to both questions.

But now you're just complicating matters here, with 'canon'

Galin wrote: 'Still it's a fact [and not that you said otherwise] that after Tolkien wrote the Moria passage he still imagined very many Balrogs existing in Middle-earth in the First Age.'

Cellurdur responded: Where is the proof in this? As he made the Balrog more powerful he was probably considering the change at that point. It's quite apparent that a host of Balrogs does not work. One Balrog alone was enough to defeat Gandalf.

The proof is in the dating: the early 1950s Silmarillion passages [in which many Balrogs still exist] post date the Moria encounter with Gandalf, as [obviously] do those references to very many Balrogs that survive the later 1950s revisions.

So the proof is in The History of Middle-Earth series, basically.