Chapter 1: Of the Beginning of Time

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Findegil

While for the chapter ‘Concerning the Dwarves the Ents and Eagles’ I think a matching of our editing should be helpful, I am in this chapter sure thst it would lead to more confusion and not less.

Yes, it seems that for this chapter we took quite different approaches.

BD-12: I was under the impression that the project once discussed about the relation between Yen, Valian Year and Year of the Sun. And from my memory of that discussion I think the result was that we should not address this complex at all. The reason if remembered rightly was the hasitation of JRR Tolkien about the greatly expanded time frame during the flight of the Noldor. Since you toke this § into your draft, what did you remember as out come of the discussion?

Hmm, I don't recall that discussion, but I will search for it.

You did not us any of the Myths Transformed text, so I think we agreed on using such when we discussed the first part of the chapter while working on the Valaquenta.

I did make one addition from Myths Transformed, but at the time I think I deemed most of the Myths Transformed texts not really useable. But I suspect I may have been wrong in thinking that.

BD-16: This last part of the Ainulindalë we left in that chapter. And I think it fits there better then here, even so nothing of what happened in the age before this revelation of Iluvatar toke place is told in our version.

I'm not sure why I left that section out. Yes, I agree that it should probably go here.

Originally Posted by ArcusCalion

Yeah I agree with Findegil, we went through long discussions about many of these points and additions and arrived at conclusions, so to start all over again seems to me to be pointless.

Not to sound too flippant, but as I wasn't involved in these discussions, I personally don't consider anything settled or concluded yet!

I'm not necessarily proposing that we adopt my version as the framework. However, I think the differences are instructive - they show, for one thing, that radically different approaches are possible. And I think this is important. When one person presents a text for discussion, it's easy to, without meaning to, get locked into certain choices that were tacitly or unconsciously made in preparing that text, and to assume that those choices were inevitable.

In other words, I think it's worth taking a step back and considering, in broad strokes, the structure of the chapter, and which sources to base that structure on.

I don't mean, by any of this, to undermine or disparage the work you and Findegil have done lately - on the contrary, I think it's great. But, as Findegil can tell you, I like to proceed with great caution and deliberation!

So, I'm going to try to find some time in the next few days to examine Findegil's draft in detail, compare it to mine, and hopefully come up with some insights into the structure of the chapter. I do think that we should not take that structure for granted, and I don't think we should be unwilling to consider other alternatives.

As a general comment on content (as opposed to structure), it appears that Findegil has obviously adopted a lot more of Myths Transformed than I did, whereas I have adopted quite a bit from the Lost Tales that I don't see in Findegil's draft. I'm inclined to be cautious on both counts, but I do think that Findegil has identified several good passages to use from MT. Do the two of you have any thoughts on the Lost Tales sections I introduced? I was quite uncertain about them when I wrote this draft, and could probably be persuaded that they shouldn't be used, but I am rather fond of them.