1/ Last week I asked you if, in your opinion, Eru Ilúvater has a body or not. 67% of you said no. But in the Ainulindalë Eru lifts his left hand. So, what's going on here? A thread about Eru as an anthropomorphic god. #TolkienFriday https://twitter.com/dietweeterei/status/1283350166645420032?s=20

2/ Notice: This thread is only concerned with the Eru Ilúvatar of the Ainulindalë as published in the Silmarillion.

3/ In order to answer the question whether Eru has a body or not and if yes, what kind of body, we have to go back to the very beginning of everything:

4/ "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made."

5/ How "aught else" is made is told in the Ainulindalë, the first part of the Silmarillion. Eru teaches a music to the Ainur in which His conception of the World is laid out.

6/ Then the Ainur see a vision of the World and some of them (the Valar) decide to enter the World to build it according to the vision. What matters here is that before the Valar enter the World, nothing seems to exist. Everything is just a "vision" one may think…

7/ Eru and the Ainur are described in rather concrete and tangible, though, and so are the places where they dwell during the Music:

8/ Eru "sat and hearkened" upon "his throne". He "lifted up his left hand", then "his right hand", then "both his hands". "[H]is countenance was stern" and "his face was terrible to behold". Finally "he went forth from the fair regions that he had made for the Ainur".

Depiction of Eru raising his hands by Ted Nasmith ("Melkor Weaves Opposing Music")
https://www.tednasmith.com/tolkien/melkor-weaves-opposing-music/

9/ So, apparently Eru has kind of a body - at least he has hands, a face and something to sit and walk with. In fancy terminology he is an anthropomorphic god. One may argue that this is just a metaphor, or Eru’s embodiment in the “fair regions” where the Ainur exist.

10/ I want to look at it from another perspective: The Valar appear like the prototypical gods in a pantheon, with specified tasks and partnerships and all and it is likely that Tolkien based them on the ancient European gods. But Tolkien said repeatedly that they are NOT gods.

11/ Only Eru Ilúvatar is THE GOD, the One creator of everything. Even if you are a steadfast atheist from birth, you probably were confronted with some kind of religion at one point in your life, …

12/ ... and chances are high this religion was one of the so-called Abrahamitic religions (mainly Christianity, Judaism and Islam). One element these religions share is their concept of a "bodiless" god. One of the Ten Commandments says (Exodus, 20:4)...

13/ "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." Apparently, the God of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) does not want to be seen.

14/ But then just 4 chapters later we encounter the following scene: The Israelites have reached Mount Sinai and Moses and some other men go up the mountain. "Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: …

15/ … And *they saw the God of Israel*: and there was under *his feet* as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, … And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also *they saw God*, and did eat and drink." (Exodus 24:9-11)

16/ Such encounters of humans with gods are called a theophany. Like Eru has hands and a face, God has feet and hands and can be seen by humans. The religion of the Israelites developed from a polytheistic religion with tangible, anthropomorphic gods …

17/ …to the bodiless monotheistic God we know today. Somewhere in between came the monotheistic anthropomorphic God of the Early Hebrew Bible. But what has this to do with Eru Ilúvater?

18/ Now, firstly, we can assume that Tolkien himself equated Eru with the Hebrew God. Tolkien viewed his creative work as “sub-creating”, a kind of mimic of the real creation by God, and therefore Eru is at least a mimic of God.

19/ Secondly, Tolkien presents his works as "translations" of original writings by Elves, Men or Hobbits. To quote from the Ainulindalë again:

20/ "For what has here been declared is come from the Valar themselves, with whom the Eldalië [= Elves] spoke in the land of Valinor, and by whom they were instructed…"

21/ Why shouldn't the Elves, just like the writers of the Hebrew Bible, envisage their God in a bodily shape like their own? Especially since they mostly met the Valar in bodily shape.

22/ Like the writers of the Hebrew Bible they may have been trying to express abstract concepts in non-abstract ways and Eru’s body may be a result of this.

23/ In short: Eru Ilúvatar is an anthropomorphic god in the Ainulindalë. It may be an echo of similar scenes in the Bible and a result of Tolkien's fictional line of transmission.

24/ If you are interested in more parallels between the Hebrew Bible and Tolkien's cosmogony, I recommend this paper by Kevin Hensler as a starting point:
https://signumuniversity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Mythmoot2_Hensler_GodIluvatar.pdf

25/ Appendix I: If you can't believe that YHWH, the God of the Hebrew Bible, once had a body and was pictured with it, look at this painting. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-strange-drawing-could-undermine-our-entire-idea-of-judaism-1.5973328

26/ The inscription says: “Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah.” It is disputed who of the figures is Yahweh - you can choose

27/ Appendix II: I also have a series called #thingsYHWHsays where I present quotes by YHWH in their original Hebrew and contrast them with the English King James and the German Luther translations.

Oh no, I finally had a context to use this gif and I didn't