MIDDLE-EARTH WAVES WITHIN TOLKIEN’S “JONAH” TRANSLATION by Will Korver According to Brendan N Wolfe, “there is nothing especially distinctive about [Tolkien’s Jonah] translation as a whole, and one would be hard pressed to link it to the author of The Lord of the Rings”. (21) However, despite Wolfe’s overall impression of Tolkien’s translation, Wolfe acknowledges that Tolkien’s rendering of Jonah 2:7 reminds him of a passage from Tolkien’s Middle- earth Legendarium: Gollum and his decision to dwell in “The roots” of the Misty Mountains (22). Although Wolfe argues that Tolkien’s Jonah translation lacks a “link” to Tolkien’s Middle-earth, in my view, the Book of Jonah is similar to Tolkien’s writings because of the references to cataclysmic destruction, to Tolkien’s translation of Jonah 2:7, to Galadriel’s resemblance to Jonah, to the scorching eastern wind, and to the Eucatastrophic ending. Possibly because of the images of a turbulent sea and “a strong wind” in Jonah (1:4) and because of the fact that Jonah's sin causes the others on the ship to suffer amid the turbulent waters of the “great storm” for a time before the waves envelop Jonah (1:12-15), these passages of Jonah perhaps reminded Tolkien of his habitual dream of the massive wave and of his descriptions of the Downfall of Númenor. (L 347) These aforementioned parallels and similarities might have contributed to why Tolkien elected to translate this particular book of the Bible, in addition to the fact that Jonah is short.1 (L 378) Tolkien’s translation of chapter 2, verse 7 of Jonah, meanwhile, may be an unconscious allusion to Tolkien’s Middle-earth Legendarium. Readers, after all, know that Tolkien’s version of Jonah 2:7 deliberately deviates from the version used by others, for Tolkien includes it as another rendering of the verse in a footnote. (“Tolkien’s Translation” 7n) Tolkien's translation of Jonah 2:7 conjures images of the Paths of the Dead under the mountain in Middle-earth. Tolkien translates the verse as “...at the roots of the mountains. I went down into the countries beneath the earth, unto the peoples of the past. But you raised up my life from the pit, Yahweh, my God.” (emphasis added) Aragorn, then, appears like a type of Jonah (albeit one that refrains from initially refusing to follow counsel) when Aragorn walks the Paths of the Dead in The Return of the King. Moreover, readers of Tolkien's mythology could also connect this passage (i.e., especially the word choice of “pit”, the phrases “I went down into the countries beneath the earth, unto the peoples of the past” beneath the mountain, and the fact that God saves Jonah) with Tolkien's descriptions of the Dwarvish kingdom of Moria and Gandalf's subterranean fight with the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring. Furthermore, perhaps readers may, as Wolfe states (22), think of “The Riddles in the Dark” chapter of The Hobbit when they read Tolkien’s translation of Jonah 2:7. While Tolkien probably did not intentionally create parallels between Jonah and Galadriel, several similarities exist between Jonah and Galadriel, which again shows how readers can perceive some ties between Jonah and Tolkien’s Middle-earth texts. For example, Jonah and Galadriel rebel against God (i.e., YHWH in the Bible and Ilúvatar in the Middle-earth texts) and each refuses God’s summons by sailing away from the area where God desires for them to dwell. (Jonah 1; S “Quenta: Of the Flight” 83- 4) Both desire to refrain from intervening to save the kingdoms of other peoples, but both, ultimately, choose to help those in need of aid. (Jonah 1-3; FR “Mirror” 356-7) Interestingly, once Galadriel and Jonah follow the commands of Ilúvatar and YHWH, respectively, the plants that they adore wither, albeit Jonah’s plant regresses at a far quicker rate than the fading of Galadriel’s Golden Wood. (Jonah 4:7-8; RK “Appendix A” 1038, “B” 1069) Finally, the history of both Galadriel and Jonah is confusing to the point that readers find it difficult to ascertain exactly when Galadriel and Jonah repented of their rebellious attitudes.2 Fans of The Lord of the Rings will likely recognize that the scorching wind from the east passage in Jonah shares some commonalities with the scenes of the Emyn Muil, for YHWH punishes the disobedient Jonah with, in addition to the rays of the sun, “a burning wind from the east” that kills the castor-oil plant shading him. (4:8a, 6-7) This will somewhat remind readers of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings of the lands of Emyn Muil and Mordor because of the eastern wind and the scant, unhealthy vegetation of the areas that Celeborn states the Fellowship will encounter, as they journey towards the desolate land of Mordor. (FR, “Farewell” 364) In the words of Celeborn, “On the further side are the bleak hills of the Emyn Muil. The wind blows from the East there, for they look out, over the Dead Marshes and the Noman-lands to Cirith Gorgor and the black gates of Mordor.” (364, emphasis added) Indeed, Frodo and Sam later find these winds prove so terrible that “Many” trees that once flourished in “milder days” now lay “dead and gaunt, bitten to the core by the eastern winds”. (TT "Taming" 591, emphasis added) Once thriving flora now lay dead or dying, in part, because of harsh winds from the east in both texts. Although Wolfe believes that Jonah refuses to view the events of the Book of Jonah as a “eucatastrophe”, a term coined by Tolkien in his “On Fairy-stories” essay (OFS 85), Wolfe agrees that the Ninevites and YHWH regard the repentance of the Ninevites and the survival of Nineveh as worthy of the term “eucatastrophe”. (26) Nonetheless, in regard to Wolfe’s description of Jonah as one who remains opposed to YHWH's forgiveness of Nineveh, Wolfe’s interpretation seems incorrect if the traditional belief that Jonah penned the Book of Jonah at a later date is correct; such an act by Jonah would imply a change of heart, since Jonah ends with YHWH's rebuke overwhelming the pettiness of Jonah’s behavior, which, in turn, extends the “eucatastrophe” by alluding to Jonah’s own repentance, albeit following the recorded events in the Book of Jonah. In any case, the eucatastrophe that saves the previously wayward people of Nineveh (i.e., the Ninevites repent after they hear Jonah’s Mandos-like preaching of coming calamity) could remind readers of Middle-earth passages like the one within The Silmarillion when the Noldor under Finarfin repent and receive the pardon of the Valar after these Noldor abandon Fëanor and his rebellious followers, who—despite hearing Mandos’ prophecy of Doom—stubbornly continue their journey to Middle-earth. (S “Quenta: “Of the Flight” 88-9) Meanwhile, the fact that Jonah refuses the summons of YHWH to preach against the evil rebellion of Nineveh but eventually carries out YHWH’s will before again rejecting YHWH’s will and then, subsequently, seemingly acknowledging the righteousness of God after the events detailed in Jonah means that his actions share some commonality with Galadriel’s original rebellion against the Valar but her determination “to thwart” Fëanor’s rebellion “in all ways she could” before she again rebelled after the War of Wrath by refusing to acknowledge her earlier mistake in departing from the Blessed Realm against the will of the Valar before finally, centuries later at the end of the Third Age, acknowledging her sins and repenting.3 The Book of Jonah is similar to Tolkien’s writings, therefore, for at least five reasons: each include discussions concerning cataclysmic destruction, Tolkien memorably translates Jonah 2:7, Galadriel resembles Jonah, a scorching eastern wind that harms flora appears in both Jonah and in Tolkien's works, and both Jonah and Tolkien’s Legendarium feature Eucatastrophes. Consequently, the similarities between Jonah and some of the plots and characters within Tolkien's fantasies likely provided some of the reasons for why Tolkien chose to invest his time translating Jonah rather than other biblical books. Notes 1 In a February 1967 letter (L 372), Tolkien writes that he “only completed ‘Jonah’, one of the shortest books” after noting he could not fulfill his original workload “owing to pressure of other work” (378), which, in turn, suggests that Tolkien picked Jonah, in part, because he wished to finish a whole book but had to select short ones (before he realized that he would only finish Jonah), knowing that time and other tasks constrained him. 2 For more concerning these moral improvements, examine “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn” in Unfinished Tales (228-56); meanwhile, because of the traditional belief that Jonah authored The Book of Jonah, this indicates that Jonah eventually repented of his sin that chapter four of Jonah describes. 3 Multiple sources are used for this passage: e.g., "The“Shibboleth of Fëanor” (Peoples 338); The Road Goes Ever On, 67-8; RK, “Grey” 1006-07. In Memory of Dr. David Oberhelman. "He was my Mentor, my Gandalf for some years at Oklahoma State University." - Will Korver Works Cited The Jerusalem Bible, Reader’s Edition. New York: Doubleday, 1996, 2000. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. ____. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Paper. (L) ____. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (FR), The Two Towers (TT), The Return of the King (RK).