The atrocity of the Akallabêth

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Hmm, but what is carried out in the Old Testament is just Jihad, Holy War.

Actually this is not the case. A close reading of the story text shows that Y*H*W*H (for those of you who prefer to see it that way) required the "children of Israel" merely to march around a city once per day and then seven times on yet another day, sing and blow horns and shout, and that's it. Y*H*W*H was the one who destroyed the city. And this is not an isolated incident. Time after time, the people in this story are required to do very little, and Y*H*W*H destroys their enemies in a variety of ways.

Legate, you said what I was going to say, and in a clearer way. And I think that you have stated the question very clearly and succinctly, though not without an assumption:

Eru is good. Eru destroys Numenor. All the inhabitants die. Are they innocent? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know; at least, it is not stated directly in the text. If some were innocent, how could they be killed by an Eru who is good? Can one posit that there must be something better for them on the other side of death? One may hope so, but the text gives us no certainty. The only conclusion we are allowed is this: if Eru destroys innocents, Eru must be evil. Since Eru is not evil, but good, those whom he destroys cannot have been innocent.

"But that can't be right." "That's too simplistic."

If such objections come to mind, please note that I have simply used logic to reach the only conclusion that can be reached.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

If there is something better for them after death, would that not mean that Eru rewarded them for invading Aaman?

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

If there is something better for them after death, would that not mean that Eru rewarded them for invading Aaman?

This presumes that those who are punished for their rebellion by invading Aman, would receive such a reward they have lost by virtue of their rebellion.

Originally Posted by Legate

I did as well. And I expected nothing more.

Quite right. However, you allowed both sides of an impossibility to stand, thus creating a logical impossibility:

Originally Posted by Legate

"How is it possible that Eru, being good, did allow the innocent to die?" ..... I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't know.

Originally Posted by Macalaure

If there were innocents among those, then, according to the sense of justice I think at least most of us share, this was not a just act.

With "sense of justice" you have introduced a subjective, and therefore mutable standard against which to judge the question. If a reader wishes to reach one's own conclusions with which one feels comfortable, then such mutable standards are fine. However, if a reader wants to understand the text based on its own internal reality, one must use the only consistent standard available to anyone, which is logic. Thus: If Eru is revealed by the text as good, then Eru is good. Further, if Numenoreans are revealed by the text as innocent, then they are innocent. Eru is indeed revealed throughout The Silmarillion as good, and the Numenoreans are revealed in the Akallebêth, as falling deeper into error and wrong and evil throughout the history of Numenor. Thus, by the standard available to us, text and logic, there were no innocents left on Numenor when it was drowned by Eru.

Originally Posted by Macalaure

Is it even possible that Eru isn't entirely good? I think so. After all, Melkor was an offspring of his thought, and Melkor's dischords had their source in Eru as well, as is stated.

The text:

But now Ilúvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar.

"Nothing is evil in the beginning. Not even Sauron was so."--Elrond

So states the text. Therefore, Eru cannot have been anything but entirely good from the beginning, and the text never shows any alteration from this. Melkor's discord was from his own imaginings and do not derive from Ilúvatar, as stated in the text.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

There is of course the very great possibility that notions of good and evil simply don't come into this. They are, after all, creations of human minds. So where would that leave Eru?

Your statement lacks the self-evidence it purports on two counts: first, the downfall has everything to do with good and evil. Just read the text. Do note that I am not saying that that is the only thing it's about, but it most certainly is there. Second, the claim that good and evil are creations of human minds is debatable. Thus, your question, "where does that leave Eru", is easily answered: it leaves Eru where the text leaves Eru.

[Břicho]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

This presumes that those who are punished for their rebellion by invading Aman, would receive such a reward they have lost by virtue of their rebellion.

Quite right. However, you allowed both sides of an impossibility to stand, thus creating a logical impossibility:

With "sense of justice" you have introduced a subjective, and therefore mutable standard against which to judge the question. If a reader wishes to reach one's own conclusions with which one feels comfortable, then such mutable standards are fine. However, if a reader wants to understand the text based on its own internal reality, one must use the only consistent standard available to anyone, which is logic. Thus: If Eru is revealed by the text as good, then Eru is good. Further, if Numenoreans are revealed by the text as innocent, then they are innocent. Eru is indeed revealed throughout The Silmarillion as good, and the Numenoreans are revealed in the Akallebêth, as falling deeper into error and wrong and evil throughout the history of Numenor. Thus, by the standard available to us, text and logic, there were no innocents left on Numenor when it was drowned by Eru.

The text: So states the text. Therefore, Eru cannot have been anything but entirely good from the beginning, and the text never shows any alteration from this. Melkor's discord was from his own imaginings and do not derive from Ilúvatar, as stated in the text.

Your statement lacks the self-evidence it purports on two counts: first, the downfall has everything to do with good and evil. Just read the text. Do note that I am not saying that that is the only thing it's about, but it most certainly is there. Second, the claim that good and evil are creations of human minds is debatable. Thus, your question, "where does that leave Eru", is easily answered: it leaves Eru where the text leaves Eru.

I suppose then it remains to define what Eru's definition of "good" was. Obviously if Miriel is guilty and deserves death merely for being unable to stop Pharazon, (perhaps the most powerful being in the WORLD at that time) even though she was a member fo the Faithful, then Eru's definition of what constitutes guilt and innocence is very, very strict indeed.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

Therefore, Eru cannot have been anything but entirely good from the beginning, and the text never shows any alteration from this. Melkor's discord was from his own imaginings and do not derive from Ilúvatar, as stated in the text.

Tolkien differs in his opinion:

no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me

and

thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory

These lines demonstrate that both Melkor's discordant theme and even his thoughts are a product of Eru. So from the very beginning, when the Valar were created, Eru made them with evil inbuilt. And as Eru says, evil is a part of the essence of existence in this cosmology; it is 'tributary' to glory, i.e. it must bow down to it, but it is an essential part of it.

this condition Iluvatar made, or it is the necessity of their love, that their power should thenceforward be contained and bounded in the World, to be within it for ever, until it is complete, so that they are its life and it is theirs

Not only did Melkor, his thought and his discordant music have their source in Eru, but because Melkor decided to enter the physical world, his power was inherently and eternally bound to the circles of the world (which possibly explains why the Void was such a good prison for him - he would be separated from his power out there, it remained down in Arda - fantastic concept). The Valar are the life of Arda, and Arda is their life - so not only are Varda and Orome and Yavanna etc a part of Arda, but so too is Melkor, irrevocably.

And Eru allowed this to happen, but as is said above, "no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me". That is one of the essential mysteries of Eru, why he makes Melkor the way he does, and allows Melkor the freedom to be part of this creation; who knows why evil is part of Eru's plan, but it is.

It's all there in the books.

Problems only arise when we try to get our heads around the nature of what we read in Tolkien's stories. It doesn't matter if we apply our religion or non-religion to it, if we apply our sense of human rights, or our sense of animal rights, or lefts or ups or downs. The only way to comprehend why things happen is to look at the books and what they give us. And if you look at the books, then evil is part of Eru's plan. It has its origins in him. It's something I find hard to accept but there it is. And why? Well...I suppose Tolkien gives us the best explanation possible. Eru describes the world he has created as:

Ea, the World that Is

It is. It is what? Is just is.

[Tar-Telperien]

As you might be able to guess, this issue interests me greatly. I have never been able to decide my feelings on it. As I plan to show here though, there are a lot of aspects to the events that people seem to be overlooking.

First off, we must look at what exactly happened during this Earth-changing event. I tend to vigorously oppose equating Eru and his deeds with those of any monotheistic (or other) God in the Primary World. To me, Eru is presented in a fashion that makes him look too different from them (but that is outside the scope of this thread).

What did Eru do? He merely responded to the request of the Valar to do something, because by laying down their guardianship of the world, they showed that they weren't going to do anything. To the extent that it is possible for one of his creations to do so, they "forced" Eru to make a move.

Eru responded to their laying down of the guardianship by "breaking the world", which means that he took the Undying Lands "away from the reach of Men forever". To the extent that one can guess the meaning of Eru's act, it seems pretty clear that this was done so that Men would never be tempted, or able, to make the mistake the Númenóreans did again. In other words, though the Valar had not been able to keep the Númenóreans from breaking their Ban, Eru ensured that the rule would be kept intact, and that Men in the future would not have to work at maintaining their obedience in order to "keep their half of the deal" like the Númenóreans were required to do. In other words, Eru made life easier for people in the future. Furthermore, Men were now completely free in the world they had, to do whatever they liked with it. They could sail as far West as they wanted and not be stopped by an artificial, arbitrary line set by a mysterious group of aloof Powers for reasons incomprehensible to them.

But...

That still doesn't solve the problem of the present, does it? But again, we must remember that Eru did not strike against Númenor directly! Everything that happened was an inevitable physical consequence of the Breaking of the World. Insofar as the sinking of Númenor can be called "evil", it must be called that in reference to Eru's seeming negligence in keeping Númenor intact, not in what he actually did against anyone. It wasn't direct punishment, it was not paying attention to the island, that Eru did. The only thing that directly suffered as a result of the deed was the shape of Arda!

So we could stop here and say, "Since the Númenóreans had decided not to believe in Eru, he basically decided not to believe in them. He completely neglected them, because they had done the same. He wasn't going to make them believe anything they didn't want to, so he wouldn't perform any miracles on their behalf. Rather, he let physics take its course. Eru's main point in acting was to correct a mistake that really had chiefly been made by the Valar, namely their poor dealings with the race of Men in making Númenor and the Ban in the first place. The Númenóreans were basically unfortunate but simultaneously not-so-innocent bystanders."

But if you are not satisfied with this answer, let's consider this for a bit. The Númenóreans, as a nation, had taken a gamble a few decades before. And gambles sometimes include property other than what one owns. The Númenóreans gambled their society for a belief in Melkor over Eru. They had decided to believe that Eru did not exist, because they felt the advantages for believing in Melkor were greater. That the "contract" was social in nature is reflected by their killing of people who would not take part in it, namely the Faithful.

But Eru made a move, which proved that they had put their chips on the wrong deity. Their bets were called in! And "society" includes a lot of things that individuals do not own. Namely, children. The Númenóreans were in a terribly desperate situation. Because they now had to deal with the person they had made the bet with. Sauron. The role of Sauron in all this seems to be continually overlooked in this discussion.

Sauron hated the Númenóreans. They had had a long history of thwarting his plans, and they had lately humiliated him. In "Myths Transformed" in Morgoth's Ring, Tolkien notes that "Sauron's whole true motive was the destruction of the Númenóreans" (my emphasis). Why would he have stopped with the departure of the Great Armament? After all, once nobody returned after a protracted time period, it would be clear to the Dúnedain once and for all that Sauron had deceived them. And the women would promptly make more babies to hurt him, and the children would grow up with nothing but revenge on their minds against this person who had led their fathers, and their King, into death. Clearly, once the Great Armament (and thus all the military power that the country had to use against him) had left, Sauron's policy of "destroying the Númenóreans" would just have been beginning. He would not have wanted them to replenish their population so they could start fighting against him again. And he would not have been nice and quick about it, either. Surely Sauron would have tortured them cruelly, since there was no one to put up a large resistance against him, and he loves doing that sort of thing.

Even if the Valar (or Eru; look at how well Sauron managed to survive even his actions) had tried to intervene on the women's and children's behalf, there would have been a terrible war in which many would have died cruelly. Sauron would not have let them leave, and he would have fought the Valar with all the strength he had. Which, again according to "Myths Transformed", was actually greater than Morgoth's was at the end of the First Age. And doubtless at that point in time he would have still have had many loyalists who would have aided him. And in the last war of the Valar against a Dark Lord, an entire continent... oh, what's the word again? Sank.

Furthermore, Sauron had already been making the Númenóreans suffer for years; they were simply too corrupted and deceived to even realize it: "madness and sickness assailed them... and they cursed themselves in their agony," we read in the Akallabêth.

Now, a word about Eru: I really can't see him as a moral figure. He can't really be bound to morality himself. Furthermore, he did not "punish" Melkor for being "immoral", he simply let him be and do as he wished, though he did warn Melkor of the consequences of his actions (namely, that his plans would not ultimately be successful). If Eru made the quintessential "moral" and "immoral" figures of Arda, namely Manwë and Melkor, but is neither beholden to them nor gives any of his creatures any moral code to follow (this is the way in which he perhaps differs most from any Primary World deity), then how are we to assume he is moral? Eru simply creates. Morality is a product of the fact that his creatures were designed in a certain way, and have limitations (namely, the ability to be hurt by others of his creatures). Morality rises from design and the practical facts of life in Arda, not by divine command. Like language, the ability to conceive of a morality was probably a gift of Eru to his creatures, to make life easier for them. But they are not required (or even, as far as we can tell, encouraged) by him to follow their moral strictures; that's something they have to decide to do on their own. Eru doesn't seem to like telling people what to do: he wants them to act for themselves!

And also, human death is "a gift of Eru". He does not consider it a punishment. The chief error of Mankind is viewing it so. The administration of death, when done justly and not carried out in a way that would protract suffering, cannot be called a punishment, then, even if you do consider Eru a moral figure. Not unless you want to be deceived as the Númenóreans were (who, as we can tell by the existence of the Athrabeth, had conditioned themselves to think this way (even if only subconsciously at times) for thousands of years).

This brings us back to the Númenóreans, who as we can see with their decision to bring Sauron to their land, painted themselves into a very bad corner indeed. There would have been no easy way out for those women and children (actually, were there even any children of Melkor-worshippers? Maybe they considered children an annoyance, and so, since they were planning on being immortal anyway, decided not to have any! Nowhere is this disputed; it's a very real possibility, in which case the "innocent children" idea doesn't work, since Melkor worship had been going on for decades). They had given so much power and influence to Sauron that he would have done something nasty before he would leave/be captured by the Valar.

So, in light of all this, was it really so injust that their deaths came about by a sudden wall of water?

Whoever actually bothered to read this whole thing has my gratitude.

EDIT: To those who have asked about the need to keep Men out of Valinor: it's a fair question. Luckily, Tolkien answers it for us in detail in Essay VII of "Myths Transformed". To summarize it, Men would basically have been "out of sync" with the longer, slower rhythms of life in the Undying Lands. They would have felt fundamentally out of place, and envied everything and everyone else, to an even greater extent than they did while living in mortal lands. And if they were granted immortality of the body somehow, their souls would basically go insane after a while, since they were given the desire to leave Arda after a relatively short time. Thus, a Man's soul and body would be completely opposed and in hatred of each other, and Tolkien wrote of the nasty consequences of that; I won't bother to recount them here. So basically, life in Aman would only be more torturous for Men, not less, as the messengers of the Valar told the Númenóreans generations before their Downfall. It was really for their own good that they were kept out (and I'm not just saying this; the essay paints a pretty squicky picture of the consquences).

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by legate

Okay, I hope this is meant as a joke...

You could call it a joke or me being silly and unconstructive. . . .

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Tar-Telperien

Now, a word about Eru: I really can't see him as a moral figure. He can't really be bound to morality himself. Furthermore, he did not "punish" Melkor for being "immoral", he simply let him be and do as he wished, though he did warn Melkor of the consequences of his actions (namely, that his plans would not ultimately be successful). If Eru made the quintessential "moral" and "immoral" figures of Arda, namely Manwë and Melkor, but is neither beholden to them nor gives any of his creatures any moral code to follow (this is the way in which he perhaps differs most from any Primary World deity), then how are we to assume he is moral? Eru simply creates. Morality is a product of the fact that his creatures were designed in a certain way, and have limitations (namely, the ability to be hurt by others of his creatures). Morality rises from design and the practical facts of life in Arda, not by divine command. Like language, the ability to conceive of a morality was probably a gift of Eru to his creatures, to make life easier for them. But they are not required (or even, as far as we can tell, encouraged) by him to follow their moral strictures; that's something they have to decide to do on their own. Eru doesn't seem to like telling people what to do: he wants them to act for themselves!

I'll agree with all of this (and the rest, actually )! I think that's the crucial point (even in this world, let alone the secondary one created by Tolkien) - that you cannot assign good/bad to the creator. A creator just is. It's from living in and experiencing the world as given to them that the peoples learn what is right and what is wrong.

And going on from that, if rules were set out about where people could go within the circles of the world then we must presume that if broken, then something would happen. I won't go so far as to say it was 'punishment', as I think it was just an inevitability.

Originally Posted by Tar-Telperien

To those who have asked about the need to keep Men out of Valinor: it's a fair question. Luckily, Tolkien answers it for us in detail in Essay VII of "Myths Transformed". To summarize it, Men would basically have been "out of sync" with the longer, slower rhythms of life in the Undying Lands. They would have felt fundamentally out of place, and envied everything and everyone else, to an even greater extent than they did while living in mortal lands. And if they were granted immortality of the body somehow, their souls would basically go insane after a while, since they were given the desire to leave Arda after a relatively short time. Thus, a Man's soul and body would be completely opposed and in hatred of each other, and Tolkien wrote of the nasty consequences of that; I won't bother to recount them here. So basically, life in Aman would only be more torturous for Men, not less, as the messengers of the Valar told the Númenóreans generations before their Downfall. It was really for their own good that they were kept out (and I'm not just saying this; the essay paints a pretty squicky picture of the consquences).

That about sums it up for me too. Men and Elves are at root very different beings. The nature of Elves in time necessarily makes them temporal creatures living a temporal existence, yet at the same time, they have incredible permanence. They are like Time Lords. (Sorry, I knew I'd manage to tie in a Doctor Who reference somewhere... ). The Elves, with their greater experience (i.e. eternity's experience, not the mere fleeting one hundred years or so of experience which most ordinary men could hope for - even the couple of hundred of a faithful Numenorean was nothing in comparison to a Elf's lifespan) of timelessness truly understand why it would be heartbreaking for all for Men and Elves to live side by side.

Elves know whereas Men must learn, and keep on learning as they die and a new generation comes along.