XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis
From: giles@poetic.com
Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:54:47 -0700, Paul S. Person
> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:00:45 -0500, Weland wrote:
>>
>>> Stan Brown wrote:
>>>> "But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for
>>>> domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit.*
>>>>
>>>> "*Of the same kind as Gandalf and Saruman, but of a far higher
>>>> order."
>>>>
>>>> Was this a slip by Tolkien, or were there actually "orders" within
>>>> the Maiar?
>>>>
>>>> I can see that Sauron was (originally) greater than Gandalf (Olórin),
>>>> but what if anything does Tolkien mean by "a FAR higher order"?
>>>>
>>> Paul points to Aquinas, though the tradition of angelic orders is far
>>> older than he going back into the third century CE at least. But he
>>> makes a good point: the orders of the angels likely are the background
>>> for Tolkien's late comments about "order" among the Maia.
>> The tradition of angelic orders is indeed far older than Aquinas, a
>> fact which causes him considerable difficulty, as the "tradition"
>> contains /two different rankings/ of the same orders, and he is trying
>> to produce a single, definitive answer.
>
> The book to read is "The celestial hierarchy" by ("Pseudo") Dionysius the
> Areopagite.
That's one, though he's rather late in the game of ordering the angelic
ranks. In fact, I was a bit late in naming the third century CE
(Pseudo-Dionysius is fifth or sixth century CE), since even NT texts
display this motif, drawing on older traditions yet.
Though late, Pseudo-D was influential in later ages. But I only meant
to give a few facts, not a dissertation on the history and development
of angelology in Judaism and Christianity in the ancient and medieval
worlds in comparison/contrast to Near Eastern and Greco-Roman divine
pantheons.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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