Quote:
Originally Posted by Dakêsîntrah
Tolkien obviously derives his Ainulindalë from the Council of El in the Bible.
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I actually really like your post... but this line irks me greatly, and I cannot resist the impulse to respond.
While I agree that there is definitely a good parallel to me made, I am deeply hesitant to ascribe to Tolkien a knowledge of the Council of El from the Bible, which is the sort of Scriptural knowledge that I do not think would have been particularly commonplace in 1920 (to give a later date for the earliest phase of the mythology), and certainly wouldn't have been among Catholics. While the parallel certainly works--and may even have appealed to Tolkien--I think you're on very sketchy ground in terms of saying that this is where Tolkien got it from. Tolkien's own statements would seem to suggest that he was trying to emulate the Greek or Norse pantheons, and then to reconcile this with his own intractable Catholic beliefs, thus producing the hybridised Eru/Valar theological structure.
In this structure, however, the Valar are not "like unto Eru" in the same way that the Maiar are lesser Valar. On the contrary--the Valar are more like the Children, Elves and Men, than they are like Eru. As the Silmarillion says (I paraphrase), "they are like elder siblings" to the Children. Like the Children, they are created beings, whereas Eru is the Creator. To apply the Analogy of Being (which is how a good Catholic would think--even if not articulated thus), the greater the similarity between something in the creature and something in the creator, the greater the difference between them. There is a gulf of distinction between the infinite power of Eru and the finite (albeit vast compared with the Children's) power of the Valar.
My theologising about the nature of Eru may be importing too much "real world" philosophy--though I'm unapologetic--but hopefully my main point that I think it would be ridiculously sketchy to call the Council of El a certain source for Tolkien will come across. Otherwise, as I said, the analogy works (though as my digressions suggest, not perfectly), but declaring that a source seems highly unlikely unless you have evidence that Tolkien was well acquainted with Scripture and scriptural exegesis during the First World War.