From: fwbrown@bellsouth.net   
      
   On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 11:27:33 in article  Paul S. Person  wrote:   
   > On Fri, 17 Feb 2017 00:37:59 +0000, temujin   
   >  wrote:   
   >   
   >>On Wed, 15 Feb 2017 10:35:03 +1100, Michael Cole   
   >> wrote:   
   >>> It happens that temujin formulated :   
   >>> > On Sun, 12 Feb 2017 09:38:03 -0800, Paul S. Person   
   >>> >  wrote:   
   >>> >> IIRC, Gandalf is sure it is dead.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > Did he say that? I don't recall anything emphatic - heck, how   
   >>does one finish   
   >>> > off a balrog?   
   >>   
   >>> "I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke   
   >>the   
   >>> mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin."   
   >>   
   >>So he was thrown down first and then fell afterwards from the high   
   >>place (where?) which subsequently broke the mountain-side... at which   
   >>of those points was the fatal blow delivered to cause the balrog's   
   >>ruin/death?   
   >   
   > I understood that line the same way you appear to when I read it;   
   > however, when PJ visualized in /TT/, an alternate possibility was   
   > presented:   
   >   
   > That it is the /ruin/ of the Balrog, not that of the mountain-side,   
   > that is being discussed.   
   >   
   > IOW, that the Balrog fell down and died, and, in doing so, struck the   
   > mountain-side, where his body (his "ruin") remained.   
   >   
   > Although I deplore pretty much all of PJs changes, here he appears to   
   > me to have found a useful alternative interpretation of the text.   
      
   Perhaps it comes from my familiarity with Hebrew parallelism in Old   
   Testament poetry, but I always understood "I threw down my enemy,   
   and he fell from the high place" as saying the same thing twice,   
   in slightly different ways.  For instance, these examples are all   
   from Psalm 2:   
      
      "The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take   
      counsel together..."   
      
      "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us."   
      
      "He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord holds them in   
      derision."   
      
      "Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in   
      his fury..."   
      
      "... I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the   
      earth your possession."   
      
   Each line comes in two parts, with the same basic idea (or a closely   
   related idea) expressed in each part, but usually with a slight twist   
   or more details in the second part.  The psalms are full of this,   
   as are other parts of the Old Testament.   
      
   Anyway, I always understood Gandalf to be saying, "I threw my enemy   
   off the top of the mountain, and he fell all the way down onto the   
   slopes at the bottom, shattering the rocks as well as causing his   
   death ("his ruin").  The text makes it pretty clear that Gandalf and   
   the Balrog both fell far down into the depths of Moria, fighting all   
   the way down, and then at the bottom Gandalf chased the Balrog upward   
   through caverns and tunnels until they emerged on top of a mountain,   
   where they fought again. It was from there that Gandalf "threw down   
   (his) enemy, and he fell from the high place" and when the Balrog hit   
   the bottom he "broke the mountain-side where he smote it" and that's   
   what caused "his ruin."   
      
   --   
   F. Wayne Brown    
      
         ur sag9-ga ur-tur-še3 ba-an-kur9   
   "A dog that is played with turns into a puppy." (Sumerian proverb)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)