Elves and Adam

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

I was reading an article by Jon Mentxakatorre Odriozola - J. R. R. Tolkien : The Philosophical Basis for Sub-Creative Words - where I noted the difference between elves in Cuivienen and Adam before and in Eden. Author brought up the former, my benefactor Borgehammar the latter : Adam naming the animals.

The elves first saw and first named stars (before sun and moon were there, or even the two trees). Their first naming of a thing was also their first word. And "el" suspiciously resembles a Hebrew word of God, but in proto-eldarin it is supposed to mean "star" and "speak". Because looking up at the stars was the first topic they ever spoke a single word about.

Adam also named things, in the real story. Animals. But before he did that, he had spoken a lot with God, who had told him to do so.

The Silmarillion was published posthumously, and includes material written after the publishing of Lord of the Rings and also after ... Humani Generis. An encyclical of which we know Tolkien's reception was obedient and obedient to an excessively pro-evolutionary interpretation - basically : we are free to believe Adam's body evolved, as long as we believe Adam's soul was a direct and primary creation of God*. In other words, Tolkien was considering himself free to disregard facthood of entire account as it stands in Genesis. A man so interested in languages as he must have asked himself what Adam's acquisition of language may have been like, if it was not a direct gift from God (leaving only animal names to Adam).

Somehow, what he said directly of elves in Cuivienen may have been similar to what he thought of man.

Now, the difference is a bit like the difference between a Catholic and a Liberal Protestant view of the origin of the Church.

In a Catholic view, God founded mankind as well as Church with one clear start to which all the rest is connected, whether it be by sexual propagation of humanity (along with, usually, sin) or sacramental propagation of episcopal succession making the seven sacraments possible. If your valid Communion comes from a valid Mass said by a priest validly ordained by a bishop validly consecrated in a series going back to the Twelve, so does your Y-chromosome (if you are a man) come from Adam and your mitochondriae from Eve, and your ability to speak started with Adam and Eve, just as your ability to get saved started with Christ's work on Calvary and among the twelve.

In a Liberal Protestant view, sacraments were gradually emerging in the Church, the narrative material of the Gospels were added to, and Church unity was also slow before Nicaea. Church didn't "magically" start with God and the Apostles - and mankind didn't "magically" start with God along with Adam and Eve.

Of which one consequence is, speech would not have started as a direct gift from God, it would have been something for which man had a capacity and gradually developed. Perhaps by Adam between being born of irrational parents with himself a rational soul and meeting God and getting Eve - on the kind of conservative reading Tolkien would no doubt have preferred even within the liberties of* Humani Generis. How this may have - if this scenario had been possible - taken place is a study for Cuivienen chapter in Silmarillion.** Adam would have one night been astonished at the beauty of the stars ... like the elves in Cuivienen. This way, the existence of the elven kind, in Tolkien, does not start with a direct and conscious contact with God, their speech is a reaction to surroundings : an unfallen reaction, a very aesthetic reaction, a reaction worthy of saints as well as very talented men, but still a natural reaction : having the God-given capacity to speech, they develop it.

In Adam's case, as the Bible has it, which is the truth, Adam has the God-given capacity for speech and God also provides, for free, Hebrew grammar and a near complete Hebrew*** lexicon, lacking however words for animals, which Adam then provides. After already knowing how to speak.

I believe Tolkien's version of elves in Cuivienen is wrong and inferior to the Bible. But I also believe both theories are superior to Pascal Picq, Bernard Victorri and Jean-Louis Dessalles - against whose book I wrote back seven weeks ago. Pascal Picq got a link to it, via FB. He hasn't answered and if he transmitted the link to the other two, they didn't bother to answer either.

One more, Tolkien's Cuivienen scene as well as the "Narnia awake" scene in The Magician's Nephew leave out the trauma it would have involved if Adam had been born of non-human parents who could not cope with his humanity. Or of him not sharing it with them. Elves are - like Adam in the Bible - created adults. And created rational. Talking beasts are created as non-talking beasts at first, but first generation such. This makes, for those who love these books, the "liberal Humani Generis" take on Adam even more mysterious and ominous. Even Tolkien and Lewis could not deal with that aspect of the theory some have defended "as Catholics" since 1950, and in Paris since 1947.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Margerite Audoux Library
St. Rufinus of Assisi°
30.VII.2019

* Humani Generis actually doesn't state anyone is free to believe that Adam was born of non-human parents or even as a non-human before God changed him into a human, it only states both options can be defended by people who are both "expertes" in exegesis and in natural sciences. In Latin, "expers" does not primarily mean a formal and accredited "expert", it means someone having experience in the matter. However, it does state very definitely that Adam's soul was a direct creation of God, not a development, and this must be believed.

** Of the Coming of the Elves.

*** The Bible doesn't state what language spoke, directly, but certain traits in the naming of things - Adam and Eve, for instance - suggest it was Hebrew or a very closely related language, which could have been considered as Hebrew as well by non-Hebrews who weren't specialists : the second best candidate after Hebrew being Aramaic; Our Lord's primary language.

° Not identic to Ruffino Niccacci, but his patron saint.