I hadn’t started a Tolkien thread in a long time, so I thought I’d take a second for a quick one.
Poll in a moment. Note that multiple responses are allowed.
Hobbits are just a branch of humanity. So they were created as part of humanity and branched off some time in the second age. IMHO of course.
I think your framing of the question is too limited in scope. We can only understand the motivations and actions of Illuvatar vaguely and by analogy. Here, the analogy we’re given is that of music: Illuvatar created the World in such a way as to produce the complex harmony of existence. Hobbits exist because their existence is part of the subtle interweaving of themes which produce the overall effect He desired. Now, a dilettante in music theory might be able to point out, in some small way, some of the chord progressions involved in the harmony, but that misses the overarching vastness of the piece.
In other words, it was surely part of His plan that the hobbits would play their part in the downfall of Sauron. But to say that was their entire reason for existence is to attempt to reduce the greatest symphony ever to a single note interval. First and foremost, I think He created the hobbits to live and laugh and love, just as He created all the other peoples. That, in the process, they would also help others of His creatures to do so is only to be expected.
I thought hobbits were just Middle Men who had degenerated.
Yep…sounds degenerate to me.
No, in groups of a hundred or more, they were intended to dry-gultch farmers.
They evolved somewhere between toasters and Poles.
I thought hobbits evolved from men. They were not an individually created race like men, elves or dwarves (and trolls too probably).
Whether it was always part of Eru’s plan that this should happen, or even that they should play a crucial part in the War of the Ring, is another matter (and I do not think we know, or are supposed to know, that).
Read the OP. I called them a human race.
Anyway, in LotR, Men are special creations no less than Elves.
On the Shockley evolutionary chart.
That is what I said, isn’t it? Men were created, but surely we are not supposed to think that all the different types of men - woses, edain, northmen, haradrim, hobbits etc. - were created specially and separately. They are all just different developments, differentiations, from the original common human stock. As I said, I do not know whether it was always all part of Eru’s plan that humans should differentiate in just this way, but in any case the origins of the different races of men is a very different matter from the original special creation of the original humans, elves, dwarves etc.
Yes, thank you.
I was trying to keep it simple for Skald.
Eru had a lot of plans. Hobbits were meant to arise on Tau Ceti, but Melkor’s tampering with the cosmological constant during Ainulindalë resulted in their translocation to Arda.
Thereby positioning them to defeat Sauron. “Oft evil will shall evil mar.”
I should think you would have locked your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer before saying things like this.
Ah well.
To be sporting, I promise that I did not poison everything.
I think there’s a difference between “They were created at the same time as Men,” “They were created later,” and “They were an evolutionary offshoot of Men, developing after the creation of Men but not being ‘created’ in any way as a separate race.” I’d go for the latter.
And while I am on my honeymoon!
Oh fie, Sir, fie!
Well, the obvious solution is to throw everything out and buy all new food. There’s no reason to think your bank account has been looted and fraud alerts have been placed on all your credit cards.
Listen, you really don’t want this woman pissed off at you.
Normally, I wouldn’t warn you about things like this, but believe me, you don’t.
I wouldn’t want that to happen to My Worst Enemy.
Oh, wait, please ignore the above.
Er, yes, we are cleaning out the fridge and changing numbers on the bank accounts.
Dude, you’re posting to the Dope on your honeymoon?