(avg. read time: 14–29 mins.)
The Fall of Númenor
In these final two parts, we examine the biblical and theological resonances of the appendices. As Appendix A has more story to it, it gets its own part. It begins with an incredibly brief outline of the stories contained in The Silmarillion, as there are dozens of entities from those stories referenced here. While this is the most concentrated group of references, I have explored elsewhere how there are literally hundreds of links between LOTR and The Silmarillion. It would not be strictly accurate to analogize LOTR to the NT and The Silmarillion to the OT, since both are set in pre-Christian times. But it is fair to say that there are similar intertextual relationships between the stories as one can identify between the NT and the OT. A fuller understanding of the story of LOTR is available only to one who knows The Silmarillion as a fuller understanding of the NT is available only to one who knows the OT. In both cases, the former is deliberately written in relation to the latter. Appendix A simply makes this fact more explicit.
This appendix first focuses on what brings us to the story of the Second Age kingdom of Númenor, which is perhaps the most pervasive link between the story of LOTR and the story of The Silmarillion. We are told of how the Eldar of the Undying Lands came to the Edain of Númenor “and enriched them with knowledge and many gifts” (Appendix A.1.i). This resembles a statement Tolkien wrote much earlier when he sometimes referred to the Elves as “fairies” that “the fairies came to teach men song and holiness.”1 I think Freeman is on the mark when he says, “Recalling that Elves symbolize artistry, creativity, and a delight in the world, we might say that Tolkien sees a re-infusion of these traits as important to the sanctification process, which is not merely a painful endurance of suffering but a growth toward receptivity to the joy and holiness of God, which shines through all of creation.”2 In Tolkien’s larger mythology, not all of which made it into the published Silmarillion, this clearly included the knowledge that helped them develop their theology of Eru Ilúvatar and what marks of religion they associated with their faith in him.
Only one command was given to them, which was “the Ban of the Valar”: “they were forbidden to sail west out of sight of their own shores or to attempt to set foot on the Undying Lands. For though a long span of life had been granted to them, in the beginning thrice that of lesser Men, they must remain mortal, since the Valar were not permitted to take from them the Gift of Men (or the Doom of Men, as it was afterwards called)” (Appendix A.1.i). This is, of course, simplified from a quite long dialogue that is featured in The Silmarillion. The Númenóreans setting foot on the Undying Lands would change nothing about their nature. The Undying Lands are not undying because they grant immortality. It is simply that the undying live there. The Númenóreans attempting to travel to (much less reside) there would cause discontent with their creaturely limitations, here signified by their Gift or, as others would later call it, their Doom. This is something we have gone over elsewhere in our analysis of Books IV and V, as well as other areas where we have discussed the characterization of death in Tolkien’s story. What is also notable in this particular text is how it resembles the Edenic story of Gen 2–3. Only one command places any restriction on the Númenóreans’ freedom. They are free to sail as far as they want in any other direction but westward. And they do become great mariners exploring these other directions over the centuries. But eventually they chafe against this one restriction and desire that which is forbidden. This is not to say that what happens to Númenor is the one-to-one correspondent with Eden in Tolkien’s story. The fall of man has already happened at this point in the story, but another fall is coming, and it is unsurprising that it resembles what happens in Eden.
And so we are told that shadows were forming around halfway through the Second Age in the reign of Tar-Minastir. He was of great help to the Elves in the War of the Elves and Sauron. They would have lost the war to Sauron if not for his help. Truly, he loved the Elves, but he also envied them. He reflected how at this time the Númenóreans loved their lives for how good, full, and joyful they were. But with such loving attachment came, for many, the fear of losing what they loved and the wish for the contrary: that such lovely life would go on forever. They did not know what was on the other side of death for them, and the unknown made them afraid. Their lives were so blissful that they had forgotten that they lived in a fallen world, and so they became disdainful of the limitation of their lives that the Elves and even the Valar and Maiar would eventually envy, for their gift meant that they were not bound to the fallen world like these immortals were. But more and more Númenóreans would fail to see their lot in life this way. They wanted everlasting life on their terms and not on the terms Eru Ilúvatar, who had given them this gift, had established.
Then Tar-Atanmir, the thirteenth king, would dare to speak openly against the Ban of the Valar, “and declared that the life of the Eldar was his by right” (Appendix A.1.i). With this, there became a clearer and growing dividing line among the Númenóreans that was centered on how they regarded death and, by extension, the Eldar and the Valar and what they received from them. On one side were “the King’s Men,” who were fearful of death and thus became estranged from those who they thought were withholding immortality from them. And on the other side were the “Faithful,” who maintained their estel in Eru Ilúvatar, accepted his Gift, and maintained friendship with those of the Uttermost West. As Tolkien said in a footnote of Letter #156, “A good Númenórean died of free will when he felt it to be time to do so.”
Of course, not all kings followed this trend, anymore than all the kings of Judah followed the general trend of their kingdom. Most notably, Tar-Palantir was practically the Josiah of his kingdom, as he sought to reform the Númenóreans and restore their ancient traditions maintained by the Faithful. But generally speaking, this divide remained and the Númenóreans were on a downward slope of spiritual decline. The narrator tells us, “The power and wealth of the Númenóreans nonetheless continued to increase; but their years lessened as their fear of death grew, and their joy departed” (Appendix A.1.i). In this way, they are comparable to the kingdom of Israel, both united and divided. Their time of greatest prosperity under Solomon also witnessed a great spiritual decline. Likewise, economically speaking, the Northern Kingdom of Israel reached its peak in the Omride dynasty, particularly the time of Omri and Ahab. But this was also the time that portended the destruction of the kingdom as it was a time of great spiritual decline in idolatry.
Finally, when Númenor was peaking in its military might, the last king, Ar-Pharazôn, challenged Sauron. So overwhelming were the Númenóreans that Sauron’s forces fled before them, and Sauron was taken captive back to Númenor. Then Sauron takes down the kingdom from within by becoming an advisor to Ar-Pharazôn. He talked him into severing all ties with the Undying Lands, including by ceasing to worship Eru Ilúvatar and worshiping Melkor instead, which led to a cult that involved human sacrifices in Melkor’s temple with the Faithful as their victims. Ultimately, he convinced Ar-Pharazôn to act on what many Númenóreans had already convinced themselves of, “that everlasting life would be his who possessed the Undying Lands, and that the Ban was imposed only to prevent the Kings of Men from surpassing the Valar. ‘But great Kings take what is their right,’ he said” (Appendix A.1.i).
Ar-Pharazôn then assembles an armada of 1,000 ships to sail on the Undying Lands, while the Faithful take nine ships to Middle-earth, taking with them “the knowledge of the True God” (Letter #156), the palantíri, a sapling of Nimloth, and other artifacts of their kingdom. And so a faithful remnant was spared in the cataclysmic judgment that changed the fashion of the world (as in the Noah story, which Tolkien noted as a comparison in Letter #156). For when Ar-Pharazôn landed on the shores of the Undying Lands, “the Valar laid down their Guardianship and called upon the One, and the world was changed. Númenor was thrown down and swallowed in the Sea, and the Undying Lands were removed for ever from the circles of the world. So ended the glory of Númenor” (Appendix A.1.i).
And so also ended the current incarnation of Sauron, as he was destroyed in the wreck of Númenor that served as the initial judgment of God against him. This judgment thus constitutes an example of what Tolkien would describe as a “miracle,” since Eru “reserves the right to intrude the finger of God into the story: that is to produce realities which could not be deduced even from a complete knowledge of the previous past, but which being real become part of the effective past for all subsequent time (a possible definition of a ‘miracle’)” (Letter #181). With this in mind, he says that Sauron was here “defeated by a ‘miracle’: a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world” (Letter #211). The fact that Sauron survives this initial judgment is something he sees as reflecting reality and his Christian beliefs concerning it: “the problem of evil, and its apparent toleration, is a permanent one for all who concern themselves with our world. The indestructibility of spirits with free wills, even by the Creator of them, is also an inevitable feature, if one either believes in their existence, or feigns it in a story” (Letter #211). The problem of evil is thus something this story must incorporate, as we have seen that it does at many levels. After all, there is no expectation that evil will be ultimately defeated and eradicated within the normal scope of history. There is no solution to the problem of evil without eschatology, the expression of which is influenced by Tolkien’s Christian eschatology.
This was also the first time Sauron’s incarnate form was destroyed, and it had such an effect on him that he could never assume a fair form again but only a hideous one. Previously, like Satan, he could masquerade as one like an angel of light (cf. 2 Cor 11:14), as he deceived the Elves in the forging of the Rings of Power in the disguise of Annatar, Lord of Gifts. But now, he aims to work primarily through terror and despair.