The Dude
Ossiriand
Oct 26 2020, 6:15pm
Views: 2974
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Some good insights but you are overstretching things in certain places...
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Again, Iranians, under most definitions, quality as "Caucasian", so the term "non-Caucasian ethnicity" for Persians is somewhat misplaced here. Even the U.S. census lists Iranians as "white". This is not an argument for any outdated racial theory, but it strikes me as very myopically American to group together all non-European ethnic groups reductively as non-Caucasian, as if historically and genetically speaking, Persians have had a closer connections to Indonesians or Nigerians than to Greeks or literal Caucasians.
As has been pointed out by others before, the term "swarthy" in Tolkien's (and for that matter, in an historical) context does not so much refer to "brown" people but to anyone slightly "swarthier" than people of Anglo-Saxon stock. The term was most commonly used for the Irish and Welsh (also see the term "Black Irish"). Benjamin Franklin famously referred to the Swedes (!) as "swarthy".
Your argument about the Semitic flavor of Adúnaic oversimplifies Tolkien. Just because the Númenoreans spoke a quasi-Semitic language does not in any shape or form mean Tolkien intended them to be a stand-in for ancient Akkadians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, or Hebrews. Following that logic, the Grey Elves should all be played by Welsh people and the Noldor by Finns. Since Westron derives from Adúnaic, most inhabitants of Middle-earth in the Third Age would then have to be cast with Arab actors. And besides, last time I checked, Iranians speak an Indo-European language and not a Semitic one.
PS: The "religion" of the Númenoreans (and the elves, etc.), strictly speaking, is a mix of henotheism and monotheism, which does not necessarily align with the codified belief of the Israelites.
PPS: Most of Iran also lies at roughly the same latitude as Greece. Crete lies further south than Tehran.
(This post was edited by The Dude on Oct 26 2020, 6:19pm)
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