BIBLICAL PARALLELS TO MIDDLE-EARTH XI. THE RISE AND FALL OF NUMENOR
(SPOILER ALERT! This blog summarizes the chapter "The Akallabeth" from The Silmarillion.)
The Story
When the Valar overthrew Morgoth in the War of Wrath at the First Age's end, they rewarded the Men who fought on their side with a new homeland, the island of Numenor, raised in the sea between Middle-Earth and the Undying Lands. To the intercessor Earendil's half-Elven, half-human children, the Valar gave a choice of the race to which each child would belong. Elrond chose to be an Elf and stay in Middle-Earth with the new Elven high king, Gil-Galad.
Elrond's brother, Elros, though, chose to be a Man. He sailed with the other faithful Men to Numenor and became the first king of the Dunedain, the Men of the West. To them the Valar gave a lifespan many times that of lesser men. The Valar put on the Numenoreans just one restriction, that they must never sail to the Undying Lands, reserved to the immortals. The Numenoreans built fair cities and swift ships. In the heart of Numenor, on the land's highest peak, Meneltarma, the Numenoreans built a holy place, an open-roofed temple to Iluvatar, the All-Father.
In Numenor's early days the Dunedain were Elf-friends. They sailed to the Elven lands of Middle-Earth, and the Elves of the Undying Lands sailed to Numenor. The Elves of the West brought gifts, the mightiest of which was a white tree, the image of the tree Telperion, whose silver light had once lit Valinor for half of the day, and was now preserved only in the moon. The kings of Numenor planted the White Tree in their palace's heart.
For many lifetimes the Numenoreans blessed the world. While much of Middle-Earth suffered under Morgoth's servant, Sauron, the Numenoreans brought its coastlands order and prosperity in mighty cities that the Numenoreans built as colonies. In time, though, the Numenoreans grew jealous of the immortal lives of the Elves and the Valar, and began to resent the ban on sailing into the West. The Elves tried to explain to the Dunedain that death was Iluvatar's gift to Men. It could not be taken from them just by sailing to the Undying Lands. These, which enhanced the lives of the immortals who lived there, would just shorten the lives of Men if they came there. To the Elves belonged a blessing in life in the world; to Men belonged a blessing in death beyond the world.
The Men of Numenor mistrusted a blessing hidden from them, but, fearing the Valar's might, still obeyed the ban. Numenor's kings tried to cling to life by medicine and magic, but died at last and left only mummies that filled ever-growing tombs. A party called the King's Men grew estranged from the Elves, but a party called the Faithful kept the ancient friendship, even as the King's Men's hostility to the Elves and Elf-Friends grew. The Faithful were headed by a house that descended from Elros, but did not hold the throne.
While dissension arose in Numenor, Sauron had deceived Middle-Earth's Elves into making rings of power. He enslaved the rings with the One Ring that he himself cast in Mount Doom in the land of Mordor. War broke out between Sauron and the Elves, who hid three rings that Sauron had never touched. The Elves could resist Sauron in part because of aid from the Numenoreans on Middle-Earth's coasts. Sauron conceived a terrible hatred of Numenor. With some of the nine rings that he gave Men, Sauron enslaved Numenorean lords who sought power and immortal life. In time the enslaved Men became the Nazgul, the Ringwraiths, undead sorcerors who lived half in this world and half in the unseen realm. With the Nazgul's aid Sauron began assaulting the Numenorean cities in Middle-Earth.
In Numenor itself the kings, burning with resentment of their mortality, turned further against all things Elvish. They neglected the White Tree, banned the use of Elvish languages and Elven visits to Numenor, and banished the Faithful to Numenor's east coast, farthest from the Undying Lands. A last faithful king came to the throne, but could not reverse his kingdom's slide into unbelief. At his death the throne should have passed to his only child, a daughter. Her cousin, Ar-Pharazon, though, forced her to marry him, then took her throne. Although he had no love for Elves, he grew angry at Sauron, who in defiance of the Numenoreans had taken the title King of Men. This title Ar-Pharazon wanted for himself.
Although Numenor had declined in wisdom and faith, it had grown in material wealth and military might. Ar-Pharazon assembled the greatest fleet that the world had seen, and filled it with an army worthy of the fleet. When this reached Middle-Earth's shores, Sauron's servants fled in fear. Ar-Pharazon marched at the head of an army to Mordor. There, filled with confidence, he sent heralds to summon Sauron to him. Sauron, seeing that he could not win a military victory, decided to rely on his and Morgoth's greatest weapon, deception. Thus, Sauron took off the One Ring and came to Ar-Pharazon in surrender. In triumph Numenor's king took Sauron home.
There matters went as Sauron wished. Appearing as a figure of light, he told the King's Men in honeyed words that it was their destiny to rule the world, but that the Valar and the Elves stood in the way of their receiving the True God's blessings. This was not Iluvatar, whom the Valar had made up to justify their unjust rule of Men, but Morgoth, the Lord of the Darkness, out of which all things arose. If the Men of Numenor served Morgoth, they would get the power and immortal life that they desired. Ar-Pharazon and the King's Men listened ever more to Sauron. They closed the shrine to Iluvatar on Meneltarma and agreed to cut down the White Tree.
This would have been lost to the world but for the Faithful. In Ar-Pharazon's day these were led by Amandil, his son Elendil, and his sons Isildur and Anarion. They had stayed in secret contact with the Elves of the West through the Palantiri, seven seeing-stones that the Elves had brought from Valinor as gifts to the Faithful. Learning of the plan to destroy the White Tree, Isildur traveled alone through great dangers to the palace and fought his way out of it with a single fruit of the tree. Isildur delivered the fruit to his father, then lay near death till the fruit yielded a sapling whose first leaf restored Isildur to health.
Ar-Pharazon cut down the White Tree and built a temple to Morgoth where Sauron presided over human sacrifices. These, he said, would give the Numenoreans life and power. The first sacrifices were burned with the wood of the White Tree itself. Death, though, did not leave the land, but grew, for, through dissension that Sauron awoke, Men killed each other for scant cause. They did, though, grow ever richer, both from the plunder of their sacrificial victims, and from the wealth that Sauron himself, gold's master, could make. Still, Men were never satisfied. Ar-Pharazon, though king of all the mortal lands by now, felt old age and the fear of death stealing all that he had won.
At last Sauron spoke his greatest deception. He said that the Valar had lied in saying that the Undying Lands could not grant mortals immortal life. The Valar had lied, he said, out of fear and jealously of Numenor's Kings. It was the greatest injustice that immortal life was withheld from Ar-Pharazon, King of Kings. "Great kings," Sauron said, "take what is their due." Ar-Pharazon accepted Sauron's words. In secret at first, but more and more openly with time, he began to prepare a fleet even greater that the one with which he had defeated Sauron.
Amandil, the Faithful's head, learning of Ar-Pharazon's plan, feared for Numenor. He told Elendil and his sons to take their families, their followers, and their goods, including the White Tree and the Seven Stones, aboard ships and wait off Numenor's east coast. Amandil himself sailed into the West to intercede with the Valar as his ancestor Earendil had done long before. Amandil, though, never reached Valinor. What became of him none knows.
At length Ar-Pharazon's armada was ready, and he sailed into the West. He reached the shores of the Undying Lands and stood by the walls of the greatest of Elven cities, but achieved neither power nor life. In the hour of Ar-Pharazon's invasion the Valar called on Iluvatar to judge the Numenoreans. He caused Valinor's mountains to fall on the invaders, and opened a chasm in the sea between Numenor and the Undying Lands. Into this chasm Numenor's fleet fell; out of this chasm climbed a great, green, curving wave, crowned with foam, that swept over Numenor. Out of all the land there remained amid the sea just the peak of Meneltarma, a holy place on which mortal Men's feet could never again stand.
A wind that arose from the abyss carried the Faithful's fleet to Middle-Earth. There, Elendil and Anarion founded the kingdom of Gondor in the south; Isildur, the kingdom of Arnor in the north. The White Tree was planted in Gondor; the Seven Stones, divided between the two kingdoms. As for Sauron, his fair body was drowned in the abyss. Never again could he seem fair to Men. His spirit, though, rose from the abyss and returned to Mordor, where he took a new body, one reflecting the darkness and evil within him. He put on the One Ring again and began a war against Elendil and his sons. In this war Sauron again would fall. Isildur would cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand.
In times of peace after Sauron's second fall, the Dunedain sailed into the West in quest of Numenor and Valinor. They found neither, though, and came at last to Middle-Earth's western shores. The world had been bent; the Undying Lands had been taken into the heavens and hidden from mortal eyes. To the Elves, though, and to a few faithful among mortals, there remained the Straight Road. Sailing this into the West, one would rise above the mortal world and reach a land untouched by evil.
The Parallels
Numenor's tale, as Tolkien said, was the tale of Atlantis. Tolkien's tale of this grew from a challenge that he took with his friend C. S. Lewis to make original stories of science-fiction for the Inklings, a writer's club to which both men belonged. C. S. Lewis, taking the theme of space travel, wrote Out of the Silent Planet, the first of the novels in his space trilogy. Tolkien, taking the theme of time travel, began a novel in which men of the present traveled in vision to the lost continent, which Tolkien, using one of his Elvish languages, called Numenor, Land of the West.
Over time it came clear to Tolkien that his Atlanteans were Men of Middle-Earth who had survived the War of Wrath at the end of The Silmarillion. After abandoning two starts of the novel, Tolkien got caught up in a new project, The Lord of the Rings. To tie this to Middle-Earth's First Age, the time of The Silmarillion, Tolkien made Numenor the center of a Second Age, the bridge to the tales of the Third Age, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien's tale of Atlantis shares all of the key points of the Egyptian tale that Plato retold in his philosophical dialogs, Timeas and Critias. In both tales the gods create a land amid the sea as a homeland for a race of heros. These, virtuous at first, prosper, not only in material wealth, but also in what pleased the gods most, justice and compassion. In time, though, greed for material wealth overcame the Atlanteans' sense of justice. They neglected the worship of the gods and became oppressors, attacking their neighbors just for dominion's sake. In the end the gods destroyed the land amid the sea with earthquake and wave in a single night.
To Plato's tale Tolkien added details from Celtic mythology, which has Atlantis-like tales of its own of Ys, Lyonesse, and Hy Brasil. He added, too, details from the Biblical parallel to the fall of Atlantis, the Cataclysm, the great flood in which God destroyed all of humanity but Noah and his family (Genesis 6:1-9:17). Much of the tale, though, is original to Tolkien himself, and flows forward from The Silmarillion and backward from The Lord of the Rings.
Besides the obvious Biblical parallels to a world destroyed by water for its wickedness (Genesis 6:1-7:24) and a faithful remnant taken by ship to a new world where they can prosper (Genesis 8:1-19), there are elements from several other Biblical accounts in Numenor's rise and fall. The gift of Numenor to the Men who had opposed Morgoth in Middle-Earth goes along with God's gift of the Holy Land to Israel after Egyptian bondage (Joshua 1:1-9) and of the Millennial Kingdom to those who come through Great Tribulation (Revelation 19:20-20:6). Note that in both cases the people that receives the gift falls into sin and loses the land (II Kings 24:17-25:21; Revelation 20:7-10).
The tale of Numenor's fall most clearly reflects the account of Revelation 20, in which Satan deceives the nations and leads them in war against the Holy Land. The nations are destroyed in judgment, and Satan is cast into the abyss. In Tolkien's tale, though, Sauron must ascend from the abyss to fulfill his role in The Lord of the Rings.
Sauron, Numenor's Satan-figure, embodies not only the tempter of Gog and Magog, but the tempter of Eve and the tempter of Jesus. That with which Sauron tempts the Numenoreans, though, is a mirror-image of that with which Satan tempted Eve (Genesis 3:-15): whereas Satan tempted Eve, who had eternal life, with knowledge of good and evil, Sauron tempted the Numenoreans, who had great knowledge, with eternal life. Sauron also tempted the Numenoreans with everything with which Satan tempted Jesus: material goods, security, and world dominion (Matthew 4:1-11).
Ar-Pharazon, alas, was more like Eve than he was like Jesus. In his role as the one who destroyed his people's faith in, and service to, Iluvatar, and comprised his land's destruction, Ar-Pharazon recalls Manasseh, the evil king of Judah, who fell away from the service of the Lord to offer human sacrifices to idols (II Kings 21:1-9). Manasseh's apostasy comprised Jerusalem's destruction just as Ar-Pharazon's comprised Numenor's (II KIngs 21:10-15).
What would have happened if Ar-Pharazon had conquered the Undying Lands? The Elves of the West had warned his ancestors that, if they entered Valinor's light, they would wither in it like moths in a flame. Tolkien is expressing a theme, common to legend throughout the world, that, if a mortal without virtue obtains immortal life, it will be a curse to him. Usually this curse takes the form of a life-in-death, like that of vampires or werewolves. In the account of humanity's expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22-24), God fears that if Adam and Eve stayed there they would eat the fruit of life and live forever. Some theologians interpret this account to mean that, if our first parents had obtained eternal life after the fall, they would have lived in their sin forever and gone from bad to worse as they kept decaying with old age and sickness without dying. In a sense, such decay is the curse of the damned in hell (Mark 9:47-48).
The concept of the Faithful, a remnant that clings to the true faith despite persecution, goes back to the "seven thousand who have not bent the knee to Baal" when Queen Jezebel tried to suppress the worship of the Lord God of Israel (I Kings 20:18; see I Kings 16:29-II Kings 10:28). The faithful remnant would have been linked in Tolkien's mind to the Church that persisted in the days of the Roman Empire under pagan persecution, and, in the Great Britain of his day, to those like him and C. S. Lewis who held Christian faith and practice in a world of ever more secular institutions.
The Faithful of Numenor, though, most clearly reflect the Maccabeans of the Children of Israel who returned to the land after Jerusalem's destruction described in II Kings 24. The evil Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes tried to wipe out the Jews' faith and practice, including their language, their Scriptures, their rite of circumcision, and their temple sacrifices. Overcoming the Greeks against incredible odds, the Maccabees restored their faith and practice in a land free from Greek oppression and ensured the Jews' survival till today, just as Elendil and his sons restored a Numenorean way of life that persisted down to the time of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.
The loss of the Undying Lands to mortal men is, of course, the barring of fallen humans from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22-24). The detail of the Straight Road on which a faithful few may reach the undying lands in the west, though, comes from the Celtic legend of the holy Irish voyager, St. Brendan, who may have reached North America centuries before the Vikings reached it. Brendan, though, like Tolkien, was a Christian. Both men would have compared the Straight Road with the narrow gate that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).
In the tale of Numenor's fall appear many elements that will be important in The Lord of the Rings. The rings of power, the Nazgul, Elendil, Isildur, the White Tree, the Palantiri, and the realm of Gondor, though, are just mentioned in passing here. They will be explored further in the last section of The Silmarillion, which follows the rings of power from their forging to their final disappearance at the end of the War of the Rings.
The Story
When the Valar overthrew Morgoth in the War of Wrath at the First Age's end, they rewarded the Men who fought on their side with a new homeland, the island of Numenor, raised in the sea between Middle-Earth and the Undying Lands. To the intercessor Earendil's half-Elven, half-human children, the Valar gave a choice of the race to which each child would belong. Elrond chose to be an Elf and stay in Middle-Earth with the new Elven high king, Gil-Galad.
Elrond's brother, Elros, though, chose to be a Man. He sailed with the other faithful Men to Numenor and became the first king of the Dunedain, the Men of the West. To them the Valar gave a lifespan many times that of lesser men. The Valar put on the Numenoreans just one restriction, that they must never sail to the Undying Lands, reserved to the immortals. The Numenoreans built fair cities and swift ships. In the heart of Numenor, on the land's highest peak, Meneltarma, the Numenoreans built a holy place, an open-roofed temple to Iluvatar, the All-Father.
In Numenor's early days the Dunedain were Elf-friends. They sailed to the Elven lands of Middle-Earth, and the Elves of the Undying Lands sailed to Numenor. The Elves of the West brought gifts, the mightiest of which was a white tree, the image of the tree Telperion, whose silver light had once lit Valinor for half of the day, and was now preserved only in the moon. The kings of Numenor planted the White Tree in their palace's heart.
For many lifetimes the Numenoreans blessed the world. While much of Middle-Earth suffered under Morgoth's servant, Sauron, the Numenoreans brought its coastlands order and prosperity in mighty cities that the Numenoreans built as colonies. In time, though, the Numenoreans grew jealous of the immortal lives of the Elves and the Valar, and began to resent the ban on sailing into the West. The Elves tried to explain to the Dunedain that death was Iluvatar's gift to Men. It could not be taken from them just by sailing to the Undying Lands. These, which enhanced the lives of the immortals who lived there, would just shorten the lives of Men if they came there. To the Elves belonged a blessing in life in the world; to Men belonged a blessing in death beyond the world.
The Men of Numenor mistrusted a blessing hidden from them, but, fearing the Valar's might, still obeyed the ban. Numenor's kings tried to cling to life by medicine and magic, but died at last and left only mummies that filled ever-growing tombs. A party called the King's Men grew estranged from the Elves, but a party called the Faithful kept the ancient friendship, even as the King's Men's hostility to the Elves and Elf-Friends grew. The Faithful were headed by a house that descended from Elros, but did not hold the throne.
While dissension arose in Numenor, Sauron had deceived Middle-Earth's Elves into making rings of power. He enslaved the rings with the One Ring that he himself cast in Mount Doom in the land of Mordor. War broke out between Sauron and the Elves, who hid three rings that Sauron had never touched. The Elves could resist Sauron in part because of aid from the Numenoreans on Middle-Earth's coasts. Sauron conceived a terrible hatred of Numenor. With some of the nine rings that he gave Men, Sauron enslaved Numenorean lords who sought power and immortal life. In time the enslaved Men became the Nazgul, the Ringwraiths, undead sorcerors who lived half in this world and half in the unseen realm. With the Nazgul's aid Sauron began assaulting the Numenorean cities in Middle-Earth.
In Numenor itself the kings, burning with resentment of their mortality, turned further against all things Elvish. They neglected the White Tree, banned the use of Elvish languages and Elven visits to Numenor, and banished the Faithful to Numenor's east coast, farthest from the Undying Lands. A last faithful king came to the throne, but could not reverse his kingdom's slide into unbelief. At his death the throne should have passed to his only child, a daughter. Her cousin, Ar-Pharazon, though, forced her to marry him, then took her throne. Although he had no love for Elves, he grew angry at Sauron, who in defiance of the Numenoreans had taken the title King of Men. This title Ar-Pharazon wanted for himself.
Although Numenor had declined in wisdom and faith, it had grown in material wealth and military might. Ar-Pharazon assembled the greatest fleet that the world had seen, and filled it with an army worthy of the fleet. When this reached Middle-Earth's shores, Sauron's servants fled in fear. Ar-Pharazon marched at the head of an army to Mordor. There, filled with confidence, he sent heralds to summon Sauron to him. Sauron, seeing that he could not win a military victory, decided to rely on his and Morgoth's greatest weapon, deception. Thus, Sauron took off the One Ring and came to Ar-Pharazon in surrender. In triumph Numenor's king took Sauron home.
There matters went as Sauron wished. Appearing as a figure of light, he told the King's Men in honeyed words that it was their destiny to rule the world, but that the Valar and the Elves stood in the way of their receiving the True God's blessings. This was not Iluvatar, whom the Valar had made up to justify their unjust rule of Men, but Morgoth, the Lord of the Darkness, out of which all things arose. If the Men of Numenor served Morgoth, they would get the power and immortal life that they desired. Ar-Pharazon and the King's Men listened ever more to Sauron. They closed the shrine to Iluvatar on Meneltarma and agreed to cut down the White Tree.
This would have been lost to the world but for the Faithful. In Ar-Pharazon's day these were led by Amandil, his son Elendil, and his sons Isildur and Anarion. They had stayed in secret contact with the Elves of the West through the Palantiri, seven seeing-stones that the Elves had brought from Valinor as gifts to the Faithful. Learning of the plan to destroy the White Tree, Isildur traveled alone through great dangers to the palace and fought his way out of it with a single fruit of the tree. Isildur delivered the fruit to his father, then lay near death till the fruit yielded a sapling whose first leaf restored Isildur to health.
Ar-Pharazon cut down the White Tree and built a temple to Morgoth where Sauron presided over human sacrifices. These, he said, would give the Numenoreans life and power. The first sacrifices were burned with the wood of the White Tree itself. Death, though, did not leave the land, but grew, for, through dissension that Sauron awoke, Men killed each other for scant cause. They did, though, grow ever richer, both from the plunder of their sacrificial victims, and from the wealth that Sauron himself, gold's master, could make. Still, Men were never satisfied. Ar-Pharazon, though king of all the mortal lands by now, felt old age and the fear of death stealing all that he had won.
At last Sauron spoke his greatest deception. He said that the Valar had lied in saying that the Undying Lands could not grant mortals immortal life. The Valar had lied, he said, out of fear and jealously of Numenor's Kings. It was the greatest injustice that immortal life was withheld from Ar-Pharazon, King of Kings. "Great kings," Sauron said, "take what is their due." Ar-Pharazon accepted Sauron's words. In secret at first, but more and more openly with time, he began to prepare a fleet even greater that the one with which he had defeated Sauron.
Amandil, the Faithful's head, learning of Ar-Pharazon's plan, feared for Numenor. He told Elendil and his sons to take their families, their followers, and their goods, including the White Tree and the Seven Stones, aboard ships and wait off Numenor's east coast. Amandil himself sailed into the West to intercede with the Valar as his ancestor Earendil had done long before. Amandil, though, never reached Valinor. What became of him none knows.
At length Ar-Pharazon's armada was ready, and he sailed into the West. He reached the shores of the Undying Lands and stood by the walls of the greatest of Elven cities, but achieved neither power nor life. In the hour of Ar-Pharazon's invasion the Valar called on Iluvatar to judge the Numenoreans. He caused Valinor's mountains to fall on the invaders, and opened a chasm in the sea between Numenor and the Undying Lands. Into this chasm Numenor's fleet fell; out of this chasm climbed a great, green, curving wave, crowned with foam, that swept over Numenor. Out of all the land there remained amid the sea just the peak of Meneltarma, a holy place on which mortal Men's feet could never again stand.
A wind that arose from the abyss carried the Faithful's fleet to Middle-Earth. There, Elendil and Anarion founded the kingdom of Gondor in the south; Isildur, the kingdom of Arnor in the north. The White Tree was planted in Gondor; the Seven Stones, divided between the two kingdoms. As for Sauron, his fair body was drowned in the abyss. Never again could he seem fair to Men. His spirit, though, rose from the abyss and returned to Mordor, where he took a new body, one reflecting the darkness and evil within him. He put on the One Ring again and began a war against Elendil and his sons. In this war Sauron again would fall. Isildur would cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand.
In times of peace after Sauron's second fall, the Dunedain sailed into the West in quest of Numenor and Valinor. They found neither, though, and came at last to Middle-Earth's western shores. The world had been bent; the Undying Lands had been taken into the heavens and hidden from mortal eyes. To the Elves, though, and to a few faithful among mortals, there remained the Straight Road. Sailing this into the West, one would rise above the mortal world and reach a land untouched by evil.
The Parallels
Numenor's tale, as Tolkien said, was the tale of Atlantis. Tolkien's tale of this grew from a challenge that he took with his friend C. S. Lewis to make original stories of science-fiction for the Inklings, a writer's club to which both men belonged. C. S. Lewis, taking the theme of space travel, wrote Out of the Silent Planet, the first of the novels in his space trilogy. Tolkien, taking the theme of time travel, began a novel in which men of the present traveled in vision to the lost continent, which Tolkien, using one of his Elvish languages, called Numenor, Land of the West.
Over time it came clear to Tolkien that his Atlanteans were Men of Middle-Earth who had survived the War of Wrath at the end of The Silmarillion. After abandoning two starts of the novel, Tolkien got caught up in a new project, The Lord of the Rings. To tie this to Middle-Earth's First Age, the time of The Silmarillion, Tolkien made Numenor the center of a Second Age, the bridge to the tales of the Third Age, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien's tale of Atlantis shares all of the key points of the Egyptian tale that Plato retold in his philosophical dialogs, Timeas and Critias. In both tales the gods create a land amid the sea as a homeland for a race of heros. These, virtuous at first, prosper, not only in material wealth, but also in what pleased the gods most, justice and compassion. In time, though, greed for material wealth overcame the Atlanteans' sense of justice. They neglected the worship of the gods and became oppressors, attacking their neighbors just for dominion's sake. In the end the gods destroyed the land amid the sea with earthquake and wave in a single night.
To Plato's tale Tolkien added details from Celtic mythology, which has Atlantis-like tales of its own of Ys, Lyonesse, and Hy Brasil. He added, too, details from the Biblical parallel to the fall of Atlantis, the Cataclysm, the great flood in which God destroyed all of humanity but Noah and his family (Genesis 6:1-9:17). Much of the tale, though, is original to Tolkien himself, and flows forward from The Silmarillion and backward from The Lord of the Rings.
Besides the obvious Biblical parallels to a world destroyed by water for its wickedness (Genesis 6:1-7:24) and a faithful remnant taken by ship to a new world where they can prosper (Genesis 8:1-19), there are elements from several other Biblical accounts in Numenor's rise and fall. The gift of Numenor to the Men who had opposed Morgoth in Middle-Earth goes along with God's gift of the Holy Land to Israel after Egyptian bondage (Joshua 1:1-9) and of the Millennial Kingdom to those who come through Great Tribulation (Revelation 19:20-20:6). Note that in both cases the people that receives the gift falls into sin and loses the land (II Kings 24:17-25:21; Revelation 20:7-10).
The tale of Numenor's fall most clearly reflects the account of Revelation 20, in which Satan deceives the nations and leads them in war against the Holy Land. The nations are destroyed in judgment, and Satan is cast into the abyss. In Tolkien's tale, though, Sauron must ascend from the abyss to fulfill his role in The Lord of the Rings.
Sauron, Numenor's Satan-figure, embodies not only the tempter of Gog and Magog, but the tempter of Eve and the tempter of Jesus. That with which Sauron tempts the Numenoreans, though, is a mirror-image of that with which Satan tempted Eve (Genesis 3:-15): whereas Satan tempted Eve, who had eternal life, with knowledge of good and evil, Sauron tempted the Numenoreans, who had great knowledge, with eternal life. Sauron also tempted the Numenoreans with everything with which Satan tempted Jesus: material goods, security, and world dominion (Matthew 4:1-11).
Ar-Pharazon, alas, was more like Eve than he was like Jesus. In his role as the one who destroyed his people's faith in, and service to, Iluvatar, and comprised his land's destruction, Ar-Pharazon recalls Manasseh, the evil king of Judah, who fell away from the service of the Lord to offer human sacrifices to idols (II Kings 21:1-9). Manasseh's apostasy comprised Jerusalem's destruction just as Ar-Pharazon's comprised Numenor's (II KIngs 21:10-15).
What would have happened if Ar-Pharazon had conquered the Undying Lands? The Elves of the West had warned his ancestors that, if they entered Valinor's light, they would wither in it like moths in a flame. Tolkien is expressing a theme, common to legend throughout the world, that, if a mortal without virtue obtains immortal life, it will be a curse to him. Usually this curse takes the form of a life-in-death, like that of vampires or werewolves. In the account of humanity's expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22-24), God fears that if Adam and Eve stayed there they would eat the fruit of life and live forever. Some theologians interpret this account to mean that, if our first parents had obtained eternal life after the fall, they would have lived in their sin forever and gone from bad to worse as they kept decaying with old age and sickness without dying. In a sense, such decay is the curse of the damned in hell (Mark 9:47-48).
The concept of the Faithful, a remnant that clings to the true faith despite persecution, goes back to the "seven thousand who have not bent the knee to Baal" when Queen Jezebel tried to suppress the worship of the Lord God of Israel (I Kings 20:18; see I Kings 16:29-II Kings 10:28). The faithful remnant would have been linked in Tolkien's mind to the Church that persisted in the days of the Roman Empire under pagan persecution, and, in the Great Britain of his day, to those like him and C. S. Lewis who held Christian faith and practice in a world of ever more secular institutions.
The Faithful of Numenor, though, most clearly reflect the Maccabeans of the Children of Israel who returned to the land after Jerusalem's destruction described in II Kings 24. The evil Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes tried to wipe out the Jews' faith and practice, including their language, their Scriptures, their rite of circumcision, and their temple sacrifices. Overcoming the Greeks against incredible odds, the Maccabees restored their faith and practice in a land free from Greek oppression and ensured the Jews' survival till today, just as Elendil and his sons restored a Numenorean way of life that persisted down to the time of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.
The loss of the Undying Lands to mortal men is, of course, the barring of fallen humans from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22-24). The detail of the Straight Road on which a faithful few may reach the undying lands in the west, though, comes from the Celtic legend of the holy Irish voyager, St. Brendan, who may have reached North America centuries before the Vikings reached it. Brendan, though, like Tolkien, was a Christian. Both men would have compared the Straight Road with the narrow gate that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).
In the tale of Numenor's fall appear many elements that will be important in The Lord of the Rings. The rings of power, the Nazgul, Elendil, Isildur, the White Tree, the Palantiri, and the realm of Gondor, though, are just mentioned in passing here. They will be explored further in the last section of The Silmarillion, which follows the rings of power from their forging to their final disappearance at the end of the War of the Rings.
posted by Alfred D. Byrd at 7:01 PM
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