It could be said, with little argument, that the most disputed book in human history is the Bible. Not only has the exact meaning of its texts been debated since the time of ancient Israelite scribes and the Church Fathers, throughout the period of medieval monastic and scholastic commentaries and finally into disputes between Catholic and other Christian sects such as the Eastern Orthodox and Protestants – the Bible has also been the subject of relentless attack by the opponents of Christianity for centuries, first from Jewish rabbis and Roman pagans, then its bastardization by heretics throughout the patristic and medieval periods and ultimately by the Protestant revolutionaries, all of whom used the Bible as the foundation for their errors.
But the secularist dissection of the Bible, initially led by liberal Protestants and Renaissance humanists but soon overtaken by biblical scholars who specialized in Scripture studies with the express purpose of “demythologizing” it, i.e. discounting all claims of historicity and the reality of the supernatural in the Bible through mental gymnastics and ad hoc assumptions like the Documentary Hypothesis and the various schools and methods of historical criticism. Ever since sacred Tradition was first put down in writing under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the enemies of the Faith have known that, by discrediting the Bible, they could discredit and undermine the whole of Christianity.
Defending the Inerrancy of Scripture
But, one may ask, what does all of this have to do with J.R.R. Tolkien? Tolkien, like all other saintly Catholics in history, acts as a corrective to the common claim by Protestants that Catholics are ignorant of the Bible, deny its historicity and literal sense, and place little importance on it, while also countering the fear held by many Catholics today of being labeled a ‘literalist’ or ‘fundamentalist’ if they accept the total inerrancy of Scripture. As a devout, traditional Catholic, Tolkien understood the Bible as the written Word of God, the special method by which God chose to transmit His revelation alongside oral Tradition.
Like the vast majority of Catholics before the Second Vatican Council, Tolkien believed that God is the true Author of Sacred Scripture, that every word by which He inspired the sacred writers to compose its many books is totally devoid of any error whatsoever, historical, scientific, theological or moral, and that the Bible is therefore at once divine and human, the expression of the mind of God through the imaginations, personalities and cultural backgrounds of its authentic human contributors. He also knew that it is only by the Catholic Church that the Bible was written, compiled, canonized and transmitted faithfully throughout the centuries, and that one can interpret it faithfully only when one does so in continuity with Tradition, according to the consensus of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and the guidelines set forth by the Magisterium.
Sadly, Tolkien’s position is no longer standard among Catholics, a large portion of whom today limit the Bible’s inerrancy to faith and morals alone, or even dispute those.[1] It has now become standard among Catholics, including clergy, biblical scholars and many ordinary laypeople, to treat the Bible more like an ancient collection of Hebrew folklore and proverbial wisdom, with only a few elements, such as the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, accepted as factual history. Modern science and historical research can give the impression that the historical accounts given in Scripture, all the more so with more ancient biblical books, lack the objectivity and precision of history textbooks, delivered as they are through the highly poetic and mythic imagination of ancient Near Eastern human writers (although exactly how unbiased these textbooks really are in their reporting of history is a disputed question in itself, showing that all historiography is necessarily colored by the perspective of the historian, no matter how ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’).
Since the seventeenth century, biblical scholars have supported this position by systematically denying the traditional authorship of the books of the Bible, so that they were written not as firsthand or even secondhand accounts but as literary compositions formulated by men writing centuries after the events supposedly took place. This is applied by many scholars, such as Bart Ehrman, Rudolph Bultmann and the members of the Jesus Seminar, even to the New Testament, which was written, in their view, by the early Church long after Jesus’s death, transforming Him from a human, if radical, Jewish rabbi into the incarnate God and object of liturgical worship, primarily through the fictionalized traditions compiled in the Gospels.
The Evangelical Power of Myth
By Tolkien’s time, in the early to mid-20th century and within the academic culture of Oxford University, what Bultmann called the “demythologized” view of Scripture was already standard, so that Tolkien felt compelled to refute it on multiple occasions. The most famous instance of this is in his evangelical efforts toward C.S. Lewis, who was an atheist when he first met Tolkien and described pagan myths, as well as Scripture, as mere falsehoods. This reflected his formation in early modern scholarship, which used “myth” as a synonym for “lie,” even if, as some Romantic thinkers believed, it contained some higher truths and signified the attempt by primitive peoples to understand reality, essentially an imaginative, instinctual groping in the dark toward philosophy and science. Indeed, Plato and many ancient philosophers viewed it the same way, and Christians throughout history have largely inherited their view, alongside the blatant condemnation of pagan myth and religion as idolatry, devil worship and simple falsehood in Scripture.
Tolkien, however, viewed myth in a largely[2] unique way. Tolkien biographer Humphrey Carpenter relates Lewis’s famous conversation with Tolkien and fellow Inkling Hugo Dyson in this way:
‘But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.’
‘No, said Tolkien, they are not... just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.
‘We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.’
‘You mean,’ asked Lewis, ‘that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case,’ he said, ‘I begin to understand.”[3]
C.S. Lewis later recalled his great conversation with Tolkien and Dyson which served as his first step toward conversion:
What Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself... I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god... similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp.... Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.[4]
Many Christians might be surprised to see “the story of Christ” described “a true myth”; indeed, this could seem oxymoronic, as though one said “a true lie,” or even blasphemous, equating Scripture with pagan mythologies, since Tolkien told Lewis that the Gospel “work[s] on us in the same way as the others”, i.e. “as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp.” But this is precisely what makes God’s revelation in Scripture distinct both from pagan myths and from ordinary history: it is at once historically factual, “it really happened” as Lewis set, but it is also “profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp.” Tolkien explained this insight more explicitly in his own writings:
After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.[5]
Historically, truth has commonly, from a wide diversity of perspectives including classical, scholastic and rationalist, have sharply opposed abstract knowledge and mythic imagination. Even those who have advocated for myth as a primitive search for truth have still generally explained it as an allegorical mode of storytelling, where ideas or material forces were represented symbolically. Tolkien shared this view in a qualified sense, as when he wrote,
I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more ‘life’ a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)[6]
The main difference between Tolkien and other scholars sympathetic to myth is that for Tolkien, myth is not valuable only for what it represents allegorically, i.e. for the abstract knowledge it conceals in the garb of imaginary figures and stories, but also simply as myth. This is because Tolkien believed that myth “present[s] aspects of [truth] that can only be received in this mode”, as he said above, so that the proper and fitting mode for communicating these truths is myth. Accordingly, while the truths of the Faith can and must be accepted propositionally through abstractive knowledge, e.g. in the creeds and doctrines of the Church, their most authentic expression is in Scripture and Tradition, in the mythic mode employed by God through the sacred writers.
What makes the mythic mode (or fairy-tale, which is a kind of ‘lower,’ more earthy myth according to Tolkien)[7] so special for humans is that we are not pure spirits like angels, or purely material like other animals, but a synthesis of spirit and body in our incarnational human nature. Therefore, the most integral, holistic way for man to learn, especially the highest truths of existence, is one that is at once intellectual and emotional, instructive and imaginative, propositional and literary. Scripture fulfills this most perfectly, containing as it does factual, historical accounts, proverbial wisdom, fictional parables, symbolic visions and many other genres of expression, while also communicating only truth, both factual and theological, without the admixture of error as in mere human myths. As Tolkien explained,
Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true on the Primary Plane. So that in the Primary Miracle (the Resurrection) and the lesser Christian miracles too though less, you have not only that sudden glimpse of the truth behind the apparent Anankê [Greek ἀνάγκη, ‘necessity, constraint’] of our world, but a glimpse that is actually a ray of light through the very chinks of the universe about us.[8]
Tolkien showed C.S. Lewis that the Christian myth, contained in Scripture and Tradition, possesses the attributes of pagan myths which Lewis and many others find so appealing - their beauty, grandeur, wonder, moral lessons, symbolic imagery, poetry, traditional wisdom, and an encounter with the divine – but with the exception that “it really happened.” In salvation history, God really did intervene in human affairs, communicate His wisdom through the prophets, reveal mysteries unknowable to human reason alone, perform miracles transcending human power and the laws of nature, and offer man the means by which he can know, love and be united to God. This is what all mythologies in world history have aspired to but have only been able to perceive as a distant, unattainable shadow, and have devised erroneous religions as attempts to overcome this divide. But in salvation history and most of all in His own Incarnation as Jesus Christ, God has showed us that man cannot overcome it by himself: only God can let down the ladder from Heaven to Earth, and only He can pull us up to Himself.
For some Christians, many of these elements Tolkien ascribed to the Christian myth can still be true even if Scripture is partially or even entirely unhistorical, simply teaching us truths of faith and morals that sanctify us but have little relevance to scientific history. But Tolkien knew, as the Church has always taught and believed, that the only unhistorical elements in Scripture are those that are written in an explicitly non-historical mode, as understood by the sacred writers themselves, e.g. the counsels of the Book of Proverbs, the theology of St. Paul or the parables of Christ. The historical accounts, however, are meant to be taken as real, factual history. As Pope Pius XII taught,
In our own time the [First] Vatican Council, with the object of condemning false doctrines regarding inspiration, declared that these same books were to be regarded by the Church as sacred and canonical ‘not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author, and as such were handed down to the Church herself.’ When, subsequently, some Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the ‘entire books with all their parts’ as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether in the domain of physical science or history, as ‘obiter dicta’ and - as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus Deus, published on November 18 in the year 1893, justly and rightly condemned these errors and safe-guarded the studies of the Divine Books by most wise precepts and rules.[9]
The difficulty, for modern and premodern scholars alike, is that the historical accounts in most of Scripture are written in a decidedly mythic mode, with the supernatural, poetic quality of pagan mythologies. Tolkien’s point, however, is that this does not discount their factual historicity. They are at once and equally historical and mythic. What they relate really did happen, as the sacred writers say it happened, and the mythic, poetic elements they relate also really happened. So, when they use numbers to make a symbolic point, the symbolism is quite true, as in other myths – but the numbers are also factually accurate. When they describe angels appearing, Satan tempting Adam and Eve or Christ, miracles being performed – all of these really happened, and their deeper meanings, identified by the spiritual sense of Scripture, never discount their literal truth which, if the sacred writer intended it to be primarily historical, is therefore historical and factual by nature.
One of the traditional principles of Catholic biblical exegesis, as explained by St. Augustine and many others, is that God communicates revelation not only through the words of Scripture but also by the historical persons and events themselves. In this way, everything in the Old Testament can be read according to the typological sense, pointing forward to its fulfillment in Christ – not only more explicit prophecies, like Isaias 53, but also individual figures like Adam, Seth, Moses, Jeremias, etc., and discrete events like the sacrifice of Isaac or the Exodus from Egypt, considered not merely as characters and scenes in a story – though they are this as well – but as facts of history. Even before Scripture was written down, the things it relates were already typological images of Christ. This is a profound statement, and it is only possible because both history and Scripture have one and the same Author: God Himself. In the words of the Second Vatican Council,
Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore ‘all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Greek text).[10]
Tolkien, the Catholic ‘Fundamentalist’
Tolkien’s belief in the total inerrancy of Scripture, within his special understanding of myth (and fairy-tale, which is a kind of ‘lower myth’), is stated explicitly in several of his writings. When addressing the popular modern denial of the historicity of Genesis 2, Tolkien wrote,
As for Eden. I think most Christians, except the v[ery] simple and uneducated or those protected in other ways, have been rather bustled and hustled now for some generations by the self-styled scientists, and they’ve sort of tucked Genesis into a lumber-room of their mind as not very fashionable furniture, a bit ashamed to have it about the house, don’t you know, when the bright clever young people called: I mean, of course, even the fideles [faithful] who did not sell it secondhand or burn it as soon as modern taste began to sneer.
But for himself, Tolkien says in the same letter,
[I]n various ways not least the firm guiding hand of Alma Mater Ecclesia, I do not now feel either ashamed or dubious on the Eden ‘myth’. It has not, of course, historicity of the same kind as the NT, which are virtually contemporary documents, while Genesis is separated by we do not know how many sad exiled generations from the Fall, but certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’.
Tolkien thus treats Genesis as at once mythic and historical – not a firsthand account like the Gospels, since Moses did not experience the events of Genesis himself but, under divine inspiration, compiled Hebrew traditions passed down to him about the origins of Creation and the lives of the Patriarchs, but still with historicity of its own kind, so that Tolkien could unequivocally affirm, “certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth.” This is why he wrote elsewhere, “There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”[11] If the Fall was not a literal historical event, our nature could not be “soaked” with it, nor would “all stories [be] ultimately about the fall”.
This is also why Tolkien understood the Gospels as eminently historical, the memoirs of the apostles and their immediate disciples such as St. Mark and St. Luke. He thus wrote, in defense of the Petrine office, “‘Feed my sheep’ was His last charge to St Peter; and since His words are always first to be understood literally, I suppose them to refer primarily to the Bread of Life.”[12] He also applied this more generally, in the same letter, to the historicity of Christ Himself, in direct opposition to most historical-critical scholarship:
It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened’, and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded of him – so incapable of being ‘invented’ by anyone in the world at that time: such as ‘before Abraham came to be I am’ (John viii). ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life’. We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences.
Scripture and the Spiritual Life
Tolkien, however, was not an apologist by profession, and while he did ardently defend the truth of Catholic Tradition against both Protestant and secular errors of his time, he primarily engaged with Scripture from a spiritual, literary and linguistic perspective. Spiritually, his love of Scripture, like his Catholic faith itself, was first bequeathed to him by his mother, Mabel, who converted shortly after her husband’s death when her two sons were only small children. Although Tolkien’s aunt Beatrice burned Mabel’s letters and papers without consulting her sons, in hatred for Mabel’s conversion to Catholicism, one book survived and is now kept in the archives of the Birmingham Oratory, what is now called ‘Mabel’s prayer book’ but which is in fact a book concerning prayer itself, written by the controversial Renaissance Dominican, Fr. Girolamo Savonarola. It includes a principle which would guide Tolkien’s interpretation of Scripture throughout his life:
If a man desires to have a true understanding of God’s Holy Scriptures, he must read them again and again, and make himself familiar with them. When he has mastered the first or literal meaning, he must meditate upon the words, so as to discover their more hidden sense, and this he will be able to do with the aid of other and less obscure passages. Knowledge is worthless without action; so when a man has understood the spiritual meaning of the words of Holy Scripture, he must ask of God grace to lead him on to love and good works. If he act thus day by day, he will make such progress as to proceed readily to contemplation.
As Tolkien scholar Dr. Holly Ordway explains,
By leading the reader through all four stages of this process with the familiar texts of these prayers and showing how they are rooted in Scripture, Savonarola proposes to teach a model for reading the Bible in general. Tolkien thus not only gained a fuller understanding of these Catholic prayers [in Mabel’s book] but also learned the importance of a thorough knowledge and understanding of scripture, something that he pursued throughout his life.[13]
One way Tolkien applied Savonarola’s principle was by memorizing many portions of Scripture, often in Latin, and incorporating them into his regular prayer life. This is why, in a letter to his son Christopher during WWII, after advising him to memorize among other prayers two sections of Scripture, “one of the Sunday psalms... and the Magnificat”, he concluded the letter with a quote from the Vulgate:
Laudate Dominum omnes gentes:
laudate eum omnes populi.
Quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia eius:
et veritas Domini manet in aeternum.
Gloria.[14]
Tolkien also discussed Scripture regularly with his family. In another letter to Christopher, he wrote,
On Sunday Prisca and I cycled in wind and rain to St Gregory’s. P[riscilla] was battling with a cold and other disability, and it did not do her much immediate good, though she’s better now; but we had one of Fr. C’s best sermons (and longest). A wonderful commentary on the Gospel of the Sunday (healing of the woman and of Jairus’ daughter), made intensely vivid by his comparison of the three evangelists. (P. was espec[ially] amused by his remark that St Luke being a doctor himself did not like the suggestion that the poor woman was all the worse for them, so he toned that bit down).
This shows Tolkien’s recognition of St. Luke as an authentic human writer, with his own personality and foibles, while still communicating truth and historical fact, including miraculous healings. Tolkien thus continued,
So Our Lord told them to give the little daughter of Jairus something to eat. So plain and matter of fact: for so miracles are. They are intrusions (as we say, erring) into real or ordinary life, but they do intrude into real life, and so need ordinary meals and other results.[15]
In response to Camilla Unwin, daughter of his publisher Rayner Unwin, who asked Tolkien his opinion on her school project whose topic was, “What is the purpose of life?,” he concluded his response with the wisdom and beauty of Scripture:
So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour. And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD . . . all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.[16]
Tolkien, like his friend C.S. Lewis, especially appreciated the evangelical power of Scripture, having employed it himself for the conversion of Lewis – not simply for the propositional truths it contains, as delineated in the creeds of the Church, but because of the literary beauty of its format, which can appeal to people who are still skeptical or biased against Christianity. As Tolkien explained,
In consequence they [Christians] have indeed (myself as much as any), as you say, forgotten the beauty of the matter even ‘as a story’. Lewis recently wrote a most interesting essay (if published I don’t know)[17] showing of what great value the ‘story-value’ was, as mental nourishment – of the whole Chr[istian] story (NT especially). It was a defence of that kind of attitude which we tend to sneer at: the fainthearted that loses faith, but clings at least to the beauty of ‘the story’ as having some permanent value. His point was that they do still in that way get some nourishment and are not cut off wholly from the sap of life: for the beauty of the story while not necessarily a guarantee of its truth is a concomitant of it, and a fidelis [faithful Christian] is meant to draw nourishment from the beauty as well as the truth. So that the faintheart ‘admirer’ is really still getting something, which even one of the faithful (stupid, insensitive, shamefaced) may be missing.[18]
Literarily, Scripture was one of the greatest influences on Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium. He directly compared the fall of Melkor, Sauron and the other demonic Ainur to the fall of the angels in Christian mythology, though he qualified it by saying that it does not correspond exactly to the Christian account because his cosmogony is fictional and from the pre-Christian perspective of his Elves, who lacked revelation.[19] He also acknowledged the similarity (and the disparity) between the Resurrection of Christ and Gandalf’s return from the dead as the White:
Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees.[20]
Tolkien on Bible Translation
Linguistically, as a philologist, Tolkien took many strong opinions on the language of Scripture. He personally owned many different versions of the Bible, for professional and private use, including the Wycliffe and Coverdale Bibles for his English research,[21] a Welsh Bible translated by William Morgan for philological purposes and pleasure due to his special love for the Welsh language,[22] an Irish Bible translated by Huilliam O’Domhnuill[23] and two Old English translations: Caedmon’s metrical paraphrases and a Latin version of the Psalter with an Anglo-Saxon paraphrase attached.[24]
Despite being most familiar with Bishop Richard Challoner’s edition of the Douay-Rheims Bible, the version used for the English readings at Mass for most of Tolkien’s life, and its Latinate style, epic grandeur and traditional Catholic renderings all would have appealed to Tolkien and are reflected in the language of his legendarium, he also owned and used several Bibles in modern English, such as the Westminster Version, a relatively obscure and unusual Catholic translation made under Pope Pius XII. As Tolkien scholar Oronzo Cilli explains, regarding Tolkien’s personal copy of this translation,
The front free endpaper has a wonderful example of [Tolkien’s] signature, characterized by the three dots and underlying ’swoosh’: ‘J. R. R. Tolkien’. In the text block are numerous notes and bibliographical amendments. In some cases Professor Tolkien even corrects errors in the Bible’s footnotes. There are numerous instances of burned spots from tobacco ash falling on the pages. A letter of provenance is included from a member of the family that previously owned this Bible, stating: ‘This New Testament was handed down to me from my parents who had known the Tolkiens (in Bournemouth) since the sixties. They had often talked fondly about the time spent with them and used to say how they were very happy people who enjoyed the simple things in life like hearty conversation amongst friends. All the amendments within its pages are totally genuine as well as the tobacco as both my parents never smoked.’ Different annotations and corrections in pencil and ink.[25]
Additionally, Tolkien owned a copy of the English translation of the Bible made by Msgr. Ronald Knox, which, although Knox was a friend of Tolkien (and fellow Catholic Inkling Dr. Humphrey Havard), as well as the chaplain of Oxford University, Tolkien thoroughly disliked for the quality of its English and its questionable translations. During the 1960s, when this version became the standard Bible used for the English readings at Mass in the UK, Tolkien lamented (and demonstrated his expert knowledge of biblical Greek, which he learned as a child at King Edward’s School),[26]
We are still afflicted by ‘Knox’, though I live in hope and prayer that ere long this tribulation at least may be removed. But the obligation to listen to his versions at any rate makes one more attentive to the Latin in one’s missal. I was irritated, for instance, by the rendering in last Sunday’s Gospel: thy son is to live, and wondered (uncharitably) if this quirk was due to more than a desire to be Knoxian and different. ὁ ἱόυs σου ζῃˆ and filius tuus vivit = ‘your son lives/is alive’. This is the obvious translation, and also greatly superior and truer to the dramatic narrative. Our Lord is represented as using the present (= now, as I speak), and later we learn that, as he spoke, His words were effective. At that moment the son returned to full health and the symptoms of disease, the fever, vanished. But last Sunday I troubled to look a little closer, and found that R[evised] S[tandard] has ‘your son will live’, and also (to my surprise) J[erusalem] B[ible]. Why? Is there some textual point (there is no textual note) – or grammatical? My knowledge of Greek is fading, but I do not see how ζ can be given either a jussive sense as in ‘is to live’, or a future. (Has it not rather its full sense ‘is in vigour’, better represented (if necessary) by modern ‘is alive and well’?) Surely if the future had been intended ζήσεται, vivet, would have been used. As in Matthew ix 18, where it is in place. There R.S. has ‘she will live’; but J.B. I regret to note, has the unnecessary elaboration ‘her life will be saved’. Has not J.B. here been ‘infected’ by Mark ἱύα σωθ καὶ ζήσῃ? Though this process may have played a part in producing the texts we now have, is it not a process to avoid in translating them, especially in such a translation as J.B.?[27]
It was precisely this linguistic expertise and profound love for Scripture which motivated the editors of the (English) Jerusalem Bible to hire Tolkien as a translator. The original version of this translation was drawn from the French version, but Tolkien still studied and referred to the Hebrew in his translation of Jonah,[28] sadly the only book which he found time to complete, although he did consult on the translation more generally. In Tolkien’s words,
Naming me among the ‘principal collaborators’ was an undeserved courtesy on the part of the editor of the Jerusalem Bible. I was consulted on one or two points of style, and criticized some contributions of others. I was originally assigned a large amount of text to translate, but after doing some necessary preliminary work I was obliged to resign owing to pressure of other work, and only completed ‘Jonah’, one of the shortest books.[29]
Nevertheless, he still offered this unique interpretation of Jonah, revealing his own position regarding scandal, corruption and simple inadequacy among the clergy and in the Church herself:
I am hoping when I retire to get included in a new Bible-translation team that is brewing. I have passed the test: with a version of the Book of Jonah. Not from Hebrew direct! Incidentally, if you ever look at the Old Testament, and look at Jonah, you’ll find that the ‘whale’ – it is not really said to be a whale, but a big fish – is quite unimportant. The real point is that God is much more merciful than ‘prophets’, is easily moved by penitence, and won’t be dictated to even by high ecclesiastics whom he has himself appointed.[30]
Tolkien’s translation of Jonah is unique in many ways, reflecting his belief, stated above, that not only the truth of Scripture but also its beauty, including in its translations, can have evangelical power. His version of Jonah especially showcases his mastery of English poetry, with its rhythmic cadence and artistic imagery. (For an in-depth look at Tolkien’s Jonah – the original version, not the heavily-edited final form found in the published Jerusalem Bible – see next Wednesday’s Inklings of Faith post!)
Even though Tolkien owned and worked on many modern English Bibles, he was also very particular about the style of English used, as his criticisms of Msgr. Knox’s version and his own Jonah make clear. He thus wrote to his aunt Jane Neave in 1961,
I think that this writing down, flattening, Bible-in-basic-English attitude is responsible for the fact that so many older children and younger people have little respect and no love for words, and very limited vocabularies – and alas! little desire left (even when they had the gift which has been stultified) to refine or enlarge them.[31]
This passion for Sacred Scripture and the formative influence it can have on children and adults alike, as well as its foundational role in the history of the world and for the development of English literature, is why he, together with C.S. Lewis, when designing the curriculum for British Prisoners of War during WWII, said that the Bible is “[v]ery necessary to be known by Students of English” and especially the “historical books of O.T., Song of Solomon, Psalms & Gospels.”[32]
Tolkien believed in the total inerrancy of Scripture because its one presiding Author is God Himself, even though His Word has been communicated through the sacred writers as authentic human contributors. He prayed with Scripture, memorized it, heard and even later in life read it at Mass as a lector,[33] and believed everything it teaches according to its literal and spiritual senses and the guidelines of Catholic Tradition. In this way, his Catholic faith and sanctity are further demonstrated.
(Cover image source: Donato Giancola, “J.R.R. Tolkien Portrait”)
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[1] Including those, for example, like Fr. James Martin, who reject Scripture’s clear condemnation of homosexuality, or even more conservative Catholics like Pope Benedict XVI, who claimed that the older books of the Bible were “tacitly corrected” over the course of its writing: Benedict XVI, Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), loc 279. Kindle.
[2] Not entirely unique of course, as little is in this world. He was especially indebted to Christopher Dawson, G.K. Chesterton and fellow Inkling Owen Barfield for his understanding of myth and fairy-tale.
[4] Lewis, C. S. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 1 (HarperCollins e-Books, 2014), 976-977.
[5] J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (New York: HarperCollins, 2023), letter 131. Kindle.
[6] Tolkien, Letters, letter 131.
[8] Tolkien, Letters, letter 89.
[9] Pope Pius XII, Encyclical on Promoting Biblical Studies Divino afflante Spiritu (30 September 1943), §1.
[10] Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (18 November 1965), §11.
[11] Tolkien, Letters, letter 96.
[12] Tolkien, Letters, letter 250.
[13] Holly Ordway, Tolkien’s Faith (Elk Grove Village, IL: Word on Fire Academic, 2023), 38-39.
[14] Psalm 116: ‘Praise the Lord, all ye nations, praise him, all ye peoples. For his loving mercy has been bestowed upon us, and the truth of the Lord endures for eternity. Glory.’ Tolkien, Letters, letter 54.
[15] Tolkien, Letters, letter 89.
[16] Tolkien, Letters, letter 310.
[17] Note from the editor: “This was probably the essay ‘Myth became Fact’, first published in World Dominion, September/October 1944, and reprinted in Lewis’s book Undeceptions (American title: God in the Dock).”
[18] Tolkien, Letters, letter 96.
[19] Tolkien, Letters, letters 131, 212.
[20] Tolkien, Letters, letter 181.
[21] Oronzo Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Luna, 2023), entries 2655-2658, 482.
[22] Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, entry 1634.
[23] Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, entry 1783.
[24] Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, entries 2356, 2358.
[25] Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, entry 1289.
[26] Tolkien, Letters, letter 306.
[27] Tolkien, Letters, letter 289d.
[28] Tolkien, Letters, letter 196a.
[29] Tolkien, Letters, letter 294.
[30] Tolkien, Letters, letter 196a.
[31] Tolkien, Letters, letter 234.
[32] Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, entry 136.
Excellent article. I am disturbed that somehow the painting of Tolkien has been AI altered.