BIBLICAL PARALLELS TO MIDDLE-EARTH V. THE FALL OF THE NOLDOR

(SPOILER ALERT! This blog summarizes the chapters "Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkor," "Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor," "Of the Darkening of Valinor," and "Of the Flight of the Noldor," and the opening section of "Of the Return of the Noldor" in The Silmarillion.)

The Story

In Valinor, Finwe, the Noldor's king, had a son. His mother called him Feanor, 'Spirit of Fire,' for he consumed her life in his birth. She was the first Elf to die in the Undying Lands. Feanor grew quickly, inventing the Elvish letters later used by Sauron on the One Ring, and becoming expert in the cutting and setting of gems.

After a time, Finwe, against Feanor's will, married again, taking a golden-haired Fair-Elf as wife. She became the mother of two sons, Fingolfin and Finarfin. Finarfin would be Galadriel's father. Feanor loved his younger half-brothers little.

Thus, seeds of death and dissension had already been planted among the Elves of Valinor when Melkor's imprisonment ended. Melkor hated the Elves for their great beauty, which owed nothing to his part in the Great Song. He also hated the Elves because for their sake the Valar had imprisoned him. Nonetheless, Melkor pretended to be the Elves' friend. He spoke to them of deep things before the world's creation, and taught them craftsmanship of stone, metal, and jewelry.

Still, Melkor played no part in the Elves' greatest work. Feanor captured the light of the Two Trees in three imperishable gems, the Silmarils. Even in darkness these shone like stars. In daylight they gave back the Two Trees' light in hues for which the Elves had no name.

The Silmarils amazed the Valar. Manwe put on them a spell of protection so that no evil creature could touch them without feeling the pain of fire. Mandos said that the world's fate was bound up with the Silmarils'. As for Feanor, the Silmarils filled his heart with a love greater than his love for his wife, his sons, or even his father.

Melkor, lusting for the Silmarils, schemed to take them from the Elves. He chose the path of lies. He told the Elves that they could grow mighty in Middle-Earth if they returned there. He told the Elves that the Valar had brought them to Valinor to keep them from founding the great kingdoms that were their birthrights. He told the Elves that the Valar had decided to give Middle-Earth to the Aftercomers, the mortal Men, whose weakness would let the Valar control them more easily than the Valar could control the godlike Elves.

The Elves began to murmur against the Valar and speak of leaving Valinor. The Elf who most lusted for a realm in Middle-Earth was Feanor. Although he had accepted Melkor's lies, Feanor did not trust Melkor, and would not let him see the Silmarils. These, Feanor showed only to his father and Feanor's seven sons. Feanor would not show them even to his younger half-brothers.

Melkor now spread lies in Finwe's family. To Feanor, Melkor said that his half-brothers meant to overthrow Finwe and Feanor. To Fingolfin and Finarfin, Melkor said that Feanor meant to drive them out of valinor. To both parts of the family Melkor taught the making of weapons, shields and swords. The shields the Elves carried openly and decorated with heraldic symbols. The swords they hid, for each side in the conflict thought that Melkor had told the secret of swords just to it.

When Finwe called a council to heal his family's rift, Feanor drew a sword on Fingolfin and threatened to kill him. The Valar punished Feanor by exiling him for twelve years. Feanor went into exile in the belief that Melkor had spoken truly of his half-brothers and the Valar. Finwe, honoring his firstborn son over his younger sons, joined him in exile.

The Valar, learning from the Elves of Melkor's lies, sought to seize him. He had fled, though, first north, where he found Feanor's dwelling and asked his aid. When Feanor slammed his front door in Melkor's face, Melkor fled through the gap in Valinor's mountains into the south.

There, he met Ungoliant. What she had first been -- a fallen Maia, maybe -- only Iluvatar knows. When Melkor met her, she was a giant spider that ate light and spun it out in webs of impenetrable unlight. Melkor saw her as his instrument of vengeance on the Valar and the Elves. He promised her that, if she helped him, he would help her drink the Two Trees' light, and would give her a treasure of jewels.

The Valar were holding a festival. Manwe, hoping to heal the rift among Elves and between them and the Valar, invited even Finwe and Feanor to the feast. Feanor came with his seven sons, but left his father and the Silmarils in the north. Reluctantly, Feanor was reconciled with Fingolfin, who promised to follow him as Finwe's heir.

Even as the half-brothers made up, darkness fell. Melkor and Ungoliant had crossed the mountains and reached the Two Trees under cover of her webs of unlight. Melkor stabbed the Two Trees to their hearts. Ungoliant drank their sap and filled their veins with her poison. As the Two Trees died, Melkor and Ungoliant raced to Feanor's dwelling in the north. There they slew Finwe and stole Feanor's treasury of jewels, the Silmarils among them.

The Valar, reaching the Two Trees, knew that only the light imprisoned in the Silmarils could give them life. The Valar begged Feanor to sacrifice the Silmarils to restore the Two Trees. He, loving his handiwork more than he loved the works of the Valar, refused them. Just then messengers brought news of Finwe's death and the Simarils' theft. Feanor cursed Melkor as Morgoth, the Dark Enemy, the name that he has borne ever since. Feanor ran from the Valar into the darkness.

Morgoth and Ungoliant fled ever northwards till they reached a bridge of grinding ice that joined Valinor toMiddle-Earth. The bridge they crossed, and stood on Middle-Earth. There, Ungoliant demanded her payment in jewels. Morgoth fed her Feanor's lesser jewels, but refused to hand over the Silmarils, though they burned him for his evil. When Ungoliant attacked him, Morgoth cried out for help. As he had planned, he was near his ancient western fortress of Angband. Balrogs drove Ungoliant off. Morgoth entered Angband and set the Silmarils into an iron crown, which he never took from his head.

Ungoliant fled into the east and south of Middle-Earth, which she filled with her spidery offspring. Some of these Bilbo Baggins would fight in the Forest of Mirkwood on the Quest of the Lonely Mountain. The last of Ungoliant's offspring, Shelob, Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee would fight on Mordor's borders in the War of the Ring.

In Valinor, Feanor and his seven sons took the Oath of the Silmarils. This bound those who swore it, in the names of Manwe, Mandos, and Iluvatar, to go into the outer darkness rather than let anyone keep from Feanor's house even one of the Silmarils. He then led his sons, his half-brothers, and their children from Valinor.

Knowing that the road to Middle-Earth was long, and that the way there by sea might be safest, he thought of the ships of the Teleri, the Shoreland Elves. When he went to them to demand their ships, they refused him, as he had refused the Valar the Silmarils. When swords came out, the Kinslaying, the first killing of Elves by Elves, ensued. Feanor and his Noldor, prevailing over the Teleri, stole their ships.

The Noldor headed north by land and sea. On the seashore a messenger of Mandos passed judgment on them. They must pay for blood with blood in Middle-Earth, Where they would die of wounds and of grief, and would in time fade before the race of Man. Feanor defied the judgment, for he said that at least the Valar had not doomed the Noldor to cowardice. He went on, along with Fingolfin and his sons. Finarfin turned back to ask the Valar for pardon, but his sons went with Feanor.

With Finarfin's sons went his daughter, Galadriel. She had taken no part in the Kinslaying, and had tried to stop it. Still, her heart burned for power in Middle-Earth, and she went with Feanor. Thus, she came under the Doom of Mandos. She could never return to Valinor till she had lost her heart's desire.

When the Noldor reached the Grinding Ice, they debated who would cross to Middle-Earth in the ships first. Feanor took the ships, along with his sons and most faithful followers, but promised to send the ships back for the people with Fingolfin. When he reached Middle-Earth, though, Feanor, filled with Morgoth's lies about his half-brother, burned the ships. Fingolfin, seeing the light of their burning afar, knew that he was betrayed. He and Galadriel began to lead their peoples on the terrible passage of the Grinding Ice.

In Middle-Earth, Morgoth, aware of the Noldor's landing, sent Orcs against them. In the Battle under the Stars, the Noldor, with Valinor's light still within them, easily defeated the Orcs. Feanor led a party of Elves against Angband's gates, but was overwhelmed by Balrogs and killed. His sons and other kinsmen, though, carried on his war against Morgoth. Centuries of suffering awaited Middle-Earth for what Morgoth and Feanor had begun.

The Parallels

This section of Tolkien's mythology is central to the rest of the mythology. Everything else in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings flows from Feanor's making the Silmarils, Morgoth's stealing them, the Oath of the Silmarils, and the Doom of Mandos.

In the terrible pass of Cirith Ungol where Shelob was waiting, Sam Gamgee would see the connection of his own quest with that of the Silmarils when he said to Frodo, "But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it -- and the Silmaril went on and came to Earendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got -- you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady [Galadriel] gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales ever end?"

(Sam had been speaking of the mortal warrior Beren's quest of a Silmaril to win the hand of the Elven princess Luthien, a quest like Aragorn's to win Arwen's hand. In the movie, Peter Jackson uses lines from Sam's magnificent speech to good effect in at least two places. To get the whole speech, you must read "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol" in The Two Towers.)

The Fall of the Noldor is another of Tolkien's retellings of Adam and Eve's fall in Eden. In this retelling, Tolkien shows Morgoth/Satan's motives as the Tempter -- vengeance on the Valar and the Elves, and greed for the Silmarils -- and the psychological basis of his temptation. After studying his intended victims, Morgoth guesses that they have the same core motivation that he has, a will to power that works itself out in the lust to possess things.

Tragically for the Elves, Morgoth guessed aright. Thus, just as Satan guessed that Eve, though of a different order of creation from his, was still subject to the desire to "be as gods" (Genesis 3:4-5), Morgoth guessed that the Elves were subject to the desire to possess, and the fear of being possessed. We need fear the devil, not because he is different from us, but because he is enough like us to understand us.

The Fall of the Noldor also has ties to the Biblical accounts of God's curse on the serpent, the woman, and the man (Genesis 3:14-19), Adam and Eve's exile from Eden (Genesis 3:22-24), and Cain's murder of Abel (Genesis 4:1-16). Note, though, that in the Fall of the Noldor, the judgment of exile and suffering does not fall on them till they've committed the sin of Cain. Thus, the Doom of Mandos is most directly parallel to God's curse on Cain (Genesis 4:10-12). It is the Kinslaying, the slaying of brothers by those who should be their brothers' keepers, that estranges the Elves from the Valar. The Noldor will be, like Cain, fugitives and vagabonds in Middle-Earth, and will lose the strength of the land that they want to possess.

In keeping with the theme of the Elves as Jews, the flight of the Noldor into exile is a reverse Exodus, a Diaspora like that of the Jews after Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem (II Kings 25:8-12). I call the Diaspora a reverse Exodus on the basis of a prophetic passage in Deuteronomy 28:68. Morgoth's destruction of the Two Trees and theft of the Silmarils had the same devastating effects on the Elves that Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of the Temple of the Lord and looting of its treasures had on the Jews.

The Two Trees filled the place of a temple in being a place of holy light where the Valar and the Elves communed. It is interesting that in the only place where Tolkien described an actual temple to Iluvatar -- on the isle of Numenor, whence Aragorn's ancestors came -- it is a temple open to the sky.

As Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of the Temple has affected Jewish faith and practice down to today, Morgoth's destruction of the Two Trees affects the Elves down to the time of The Lord of the Rings. As the wise, though uneducated, Sam perceives, he comes face to face with the destruction of the Two Trees in Galadriel, who witnessed that destruction and is under the Doom of Mandos. From this she is freed only by her rejection of Sauron's One Ring and its destruction through, in no small part, Sam's efforts. (Peter Jackson, alas, left Sam's wonderful talk with Galadriel out of The Fellowship of the Rings.)

The Ring, as we'll see, is in many ways Sauron's embodiment of Morgoth's will to power. Those who take the Ring, as Sauron did, accept the words of Milton's Lucifer in Paradise Lost, "It's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Those who reject the Ring, as Galadriel did, accept the words of the Psalmist, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness" (Psalm 84:10). Galadriel, who had been a queen in Middle-Earth, would be just a servant of the Valar in Valinor, but she would be free to, as she said, "remain Galadriel."

Galadriel, as Tolkien said, was suggested to him by his veneration as a Roman Catholic of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but differed from Mary in being a penitent. (Galadriel also differs from Mary, in the Roman Catholic view, by having a child by a man of her own kind. Galadriel is Arwen's grandmother and Elrond's mother-in-law.) More than like Mary the mother of Jesus, though, Galadriel is like Mary's namesake, Miriam, the sister of Moses (Exodus 2:1-10; 15:20-21). If Miriam were alive today, she would be to the Jews what Galadriel is to the Elves, one who carries down through time memories of great events of her people's beginnings. When Frodo and Sam meet Galadriel, they talk with one who has seen the Two Trees in bloom, spoken with archangels and the Archdemon, and witnessed her people's fall and exile.

In the destruction of the Two Trees we meet a theme that the Dead Sea Scrolls call "The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness." As Morgoth had been fascinated with darkness from his beginning, he was always ready to oppose light with darkness. As he had once destroyed the two pillars of light in Middle-Earth, now he destroys the Two Trees of Valinor. As we'll see, when the sun first rises, Morgoth will try to blot out sunlight with smoke from the volcano Thangorodrim, just as, in The Return of the King, Morgoth's servant Sauron will try to blot out sunlight with smoke from the volcano Mount Doom.

The war of light against darkness in Tolkien's mythology reflects a like war in Scripture. This war is dramatized by the Apostle John in such verses as "The light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (John 1:5) and "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not do the truth; But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin" (I John 1:5-7).

To understand the theme of light and darkness better, you could read the whole letter of I John, which tells of a universal struggle of darkness against light played out in the hearts of individual believers and in the Church. You could also get hold of a good concordance and look up all of the Bible's verses on light and darkness, as many of these will touch Tolkien's work as we go on through it.