What Can Tolkien's Vision Tell Us About Old Earth Compromise?

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Laketown, but not Esgaroth · Creation vs. Evolution: What Can Tolkien's Vision Tell Us About Old Earth Compromise?

I was just watching

The Blue Wizards and the East | Tolkien Explained
12th Dec. 2020 | Nerd of the Rings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ckCj7UguUw

Part of the deal is Tolkien putting the Blue Wizards as supporting men who rebelled against ... devilworship.

With very long ages, it seems Tolkien had one particular idea on why the genealogies are so short - same reason why four generations are left out of Matthew, these being evil generations.

Now, suppose mankind had existed for some 40 to 60 000 years. Suppose also, good generations are preserved in the genealogies, evil ones are left out. This would explain the shortness of generation add up in Genesis 5 and 11 between first men and Abraham. But only if mankind for most of the time had been in very utter darkness, if idolatry and cannibalism were thousands of years older than Abraham.

That there can have been pre-Flood cannibalism, I agree.

But I do not agree with the idea of a human history dominated by cannibalism, magic, idol worship and in which only rare glimpses of truth were preserved only regionally, and this not just from Abraham on, but for millennia before him.

Whether or not you believe Dei Verbum is from a real council, here is a paragraph saner than that:

3. God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20). Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents. Then after their fall His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved (see Gen. 3:15) and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation (see Rom. 2:6-7). Then, at the time He had appointed He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries.

Note, it says "the human race" and not small islands with shifting configurations like Hebrews but in other parts before Abraham. The one predecessor of Hebrews was the entire human race ... and if Noah had become one of a small remnant, this remnant was not based on nations before the Flood, as both Seth and Cain contributed to the Ark. The evil before the Flood may have involved some worship of fallen spirits, but this was not as far as I can see, a state religion in most places - it was just highly fashionable.

And after the Flood, idolatry doesn't resurge, but get invented in the time of Sarug, with Nachor and Thare getting involved in it, but not enough generations to completely hide the truth from Abraham. Serug 663 – 993, Abraham 942 – 1117 counted in years after the Flood. He could know a great-grandfather who was never idolater, and who, like a François de Thonon could tell his son François de Sales he had seen Calvinism born, so also could tell his great-grandson Abraham he had seen idolatry born.

But if we accept Old Earth, we get human sacrifice in Ur 500 years before Abraham, and that not even the start of idolatry:

NYT : At Ur, Ritual Deaths That Were Anything but Serene
By John Noble Wilford, Oct. 26, 2009
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/science/27ur.html

The exact kind of thing Tolkien was envisaging ... in other words, he paid a price for his episcopate (Catholic Bishops of England and Wales) accepting Old Earth compromise while he was alive.

His vision is intensely poetic, but fortunately it is also wrong. I do not mean fictional, that's a matter of course, but as to the general background that his fiction is supposed to flesh out.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Maurilius of Angers
13.IX.2021