[HPFGU-OTChatter] Christians and LOTR

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

At 5:52 PM +0100 7/17/03, Kathryn Cawte wrote:
>
>
>  Amy Z wote:
>>But what I most wonder about the HP-hating Tolkien lovers is whether
>>they have ever read the Ainulindale (the creation story in The
>>Silmarillion--the part you skip to get to the good stuff about the
>  >Silmaril).
>
>And seriously - there are good bits in the Silmarillion?

*LOL* Oh, dear.  I ripped through the Ainulindale at a sitting, 
completely devoured it - it's the parts after that that bogged me 
down terribly.  Then again, I *loved* the Valar - it's the perfect 
pantheon (if you ignore the sexism, which is present in pretty much 
all the historical ones as well) - and I'm not Christian, either.


At 5:52 PM +0100 7/17/03, Kathryn Cawte wrote:
>Perhaps it's in part because while based in some ways on our world Middle
>Earth is clearly not our Earth whereas JKR's world is ours.

Actually, I don't think it's safe to say that Middle Earth is 
"clearly not our Earth."  Tolkien indicates in a couple of different 
places that it's a "mythic" version of our world, in time before 
history.  Granted, that's a far cry from 1990s Britain, which is 
where and when JKR has placed her story, but "Middle Earth" is based 
on "Midgard" - which, in the Norse myths, was indeed the world the 
tellers lived in.

-- 

  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles(at)earthlink.net
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the 
act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. "
	- Gauss, in a Letter to Bolyai, 1808.