Imagine no religion

[Ardent]

Originally Posted by skip spence

...In Middle Earth, apparently, there are no clerics and there are no holy books...

Not entirely true. Rumil of Tirion is supposed to have written several books, which were continued by Pengolodh of Gondolin. They must have been preserved into the Third Age because Bilbo is supposed to have translated them into Westron.

They were written as historical facts of ME, rather than 'holy' books, but the distinction is a fine one. Rumil's creation story, Ainulindalë, is the opening chapter of the Silmarillion and it is both history and mythology: historical in its account of creation and mythological in its removal from the state of affairs at the end of the Third Age.

It is unclear what the peoples of the TA believed in what we might call a "religious" way. If the Dwarves considered their own tales as fact then Elvish tales would be less significant, but if they considered thir own tales to be parables just for Dwarves, then maybe they could be more accomodating of Elvish tales. How would Elven tales like Ainulindalë be percieved by Men and Hobbits? Wouldn't they be considered as myth? After all, ME was no longer lit by two trees, nor was it flat, so the stories would not match observable phenomena. Even the mountains and rivers had been completely reformed, so there was little possibility of paleaontological/archaeological evidence to validate or re-write the tales. It seems logical to imagine the younger races, as the centuries of the Fourth Age pass, calling Rumil's works "sacred" or "holy", if not to themselves then at least to the Elves.