The Dude
Ossiriand
Oct 27 2020, 1:42pm
Views: 2837
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What you describe about pre-Hellenistic Judaism, while not entirely unfounded,...
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...does not really align with the "religion" (or rather, partially ritualized belief system) of the Númenoreans; which again is not so much their "religion" specifically but the belief of all free peoples of Arda. The elves also believed in the One and the Valar.
On a similar note, the pantheon of Tolkien's legendarium is influenced by multiple religious and mythological traditions: Germanic/Norse and Greco-Roman paganism, ancient Judaism, and, of course, Catholicism.
"As such, I'm saying that Amazon have legitimate scope for depicting Numenoreans as non-Europeans, because the culture Tolkien describes for us is impossible to pin down to anything in the real world exactly."
That is just bad hermeneutics. Yes, you are right, Tolkien did not intend Númenorean "culture" to be a cipher for "European culture", whatever that might be in a mythical, ancient context. But "phenotypically" speaking, he certainly viewed them as a mythical, inherently quasi-"European" looking ancestor ethnicity of an ancient civilization (Realms in Exile) in a long-forgotten past of Europe. In Tolkien's understanding, the Númenoreans did not look identical to historical Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Spaniards; more like an atavistic blend of these ethnicities, i.e., not like modern Americans but simply different - taller, sterner, more ancient and more noble (not a snide at Americans).
Could it still, from a canonical perspective, be justified to portray some Númenoreans as "non-European" (again, this overtly broad term)? I doubt Tolkien intended anything along those lines, but it would not be implausible to think that some of the Númenoreans in the Second Age intermarried with local elites on the continent, that some of those elites hailed from "Arda's Middle East", and that some of the descendants of those unions ultimately ended up back on Númenor as nearly fully integrated Númenoreans. Their own descendants would have then fully blended into Númenorean culture, becoming virtually indistinguishable from the "pure" Númenoreans (excl. longevity).
Now I doubt this series will follow anything of a canonical approach, so it is entirely possible that we will get an Orientalist vision of Númenor that somewhat awkwardly blends Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, and other MENA cultures to give off rather outdated "exotic" vibes.
Then again, the only Persian-looking (or for that matter, broadly Middle-Eastern looking) cast member we know so far is Ms Boniadi, and I cannot recall any specific casting rumors for Iranians or "Northeastern Middle-Eastern" looking extras. So this is still very much speculation.
(This post was edited by The Dude on Oct 27 2020, 1:47pm)
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