Matt Davis 9/7/10

Today at lunch we were all discussing the books we brought to class and as we started discussing the book I brought, The Silmarillion, I started to notice how many Biblical reference are in the book. This book is pretty much the lore the trilogy The Lord of The Rings and it gives all this history before the main storyline gets started. What most stuck out about the Biblical references was the origin of life in the book. In The Silmarillion the origin of all life comes from one creator and this creator makes all of the heavens and then the creatures in the heavens. And Tolkien continues to describe the heavens and the heavenly beings, and all of the heavenly beings play songs and there is one heavenly being who makes the most beautiful music but has a desire to be more powerful, as in making better music, than the creator. There is a conflict where they both play their music and then the creator overcomes the heavenly being named Malkor and then sends Malkor into the abyss. After sending Malkor into the abyss the creator puts the other heavenly beings in charge of certain aspects and one of the heavenly beings is put in charge of ruling over earth. To me this entire creation story and the discord with Malkor closely resemble the Christian creation story in that there is a single creator and that the devil became jealous over our creator and was thrown out of the heavens for this sinful jealousy. In The Silmarillion Malkor closely resembles the devil, and after being thrown into the abyss the creator lets him roam the earth and bring evil into the world. I just thought it was interesting how Tolkien started off his world with a creation story that clearly resembles the Biblical creation story.