Herr Arnulfe wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 11:21 amEven so, artists are responsible for inferences that logically arise from their RW analogies. For example, you can't dress the Imperial Guard in WW2 German uniforms and then claim that any similarity between the Imperium and Nazi Germany is purely coincidental.
Noticing you've made our thread reach the Godwin point (!) I have however to admit that I do not get your point, nor understand how it would be related to the current topic nor to what was previously wrote here...
Herr Arnulfe wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 11:21 amI trust that Tolkien's intent for the "Dwarfs=Jews" analogy was well-intentioned. However, I think there's a reason why he didn't play up the Erebor=Zion analogy, because a man of his literary chops must surely have understood what that would imply about Orcs.
I would tend to stick with the "diaspora experience" in general when comparing Dwarfs to Jews, and leave the "occupied holy land" out of it unless you're prepared to tackle the other half of that analogy properly.
Logic should help to understand that the alleged "other half of the 'Erebor=Zion' analogy" that you try to establish do not hold up. That is an incoherent, illogical and fallacious sophism.
The mediaeval diaspora experience is indeed one of the claimed source of Tolkien's inspiration for Middle Earth's dwarves:
More than three decades after publishing “The Hobbit,” Tolkien spoke about the Jewish-dwarvish connection during a BBC interview.
“I didn’t intend it, but when you’ve got these people on your hands, you’ve got to make them different, haven’t you?” said Tolkien during the 1971 interview. “The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic. The hobbits are just rustic English people,” he said.
According to Tolkien scholar John Rateliff, author of a two-volume “Hobbit” history published in 2007, Tolkien drew inspiration from Hebrew texts and Jewish history when developing the dwarves. As craftsmen exiled from a bountiful homeland, the dwarves spoke both the language of their adopted nations and – among themselves – a Hebrew-influenced tongue developed by Tolkien.
Though Tolkien’s dwarves remember their traumatic past with mournful songs, most are assimilated and ambivalent about reclaiming Erebor, their lost country. Back at the Lonely Mountain, hidden somewhere beneath the dragon Smaug’s treasure mound, there’s a self-glowing “Arkenstone” gem, called “the heart of the mountain.”
The divinely inspired Arkenstone — say some observers — represents the Ark of the Covenant, with the Lonely Mountain standing in for Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
As with the Old Testament’s later Jewish kings, the dwarf kings of Erebor prove to be highly corruptible, not to mention gold-obsessed. Their ceaseless accumulation of wealth – Tolkien makes clear – stoked the resentment of neighbors, and eventually brought on the marauding dragon. (Matt LEBOVIC, op. cit.)
Nota bene that it is difficult to both stick with the "diaspora" and leave the "diaspora" as you seem to suggest...
(and that Dwarven lost realms could be as much described as destructed than occupied).
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Gideon wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:44 amHowever, I think the bigger problem is that it has not in my opinion been established that Warhammer dwarfs are portrayed as Jewish. All we have is a solitary Zaiyon reference, for which there are alternative (and in my view more plausible) explanations. In any case, that Zaiyon reference alludes to Zion in a Christian, not Jewish, context.
It isn't established no. I fully agree with that.
Worse, I feel it would be erroneous to state that dwarves would be portrayed as Jewish. That is way too exaggerated and too much unidimensional...
It seems however established that Tolkien tooks inspiration, among others, from Germanic mythological dwarfs and from the diaspora to design his dwarves and that
Death on the Reik's Zaiyon is a reference to Zion which is, in Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Rastafari contexts, associated with Hebrews.
It is presumed (and generally agreed) that
Warhammer's dwarves took a strong inspiration, among others, from Tolkien's dwarves, and it look like the name of their culture and language, Khazalid, could be borrowed from Tolkien's Semitic fashioned construct Khuzdul. This might perhaps had intentionally or inconsequently inspired Rick Priestley when he designed his obviously Semitic Chaos Dwarves.
It appears, too, that
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's dwarves have borrowed from Tolkien's their aspect of a nation in exile: most dwarves now lives with men, and even among purely khazalid communities, a significant share are constituted by new communities. Only very few of the places of origin of dwarves still stand... Both somewhat praised and somewhat despised,
Warhammer's dwarven communities constitute something that somewhat looks like to our Real World's mediaeval "diaspora".
It seem very much probable, too, that
Warhammer Fantasy didn't only borrowed things from fiction, historical, prehistorical or contemporary things... it also created original things. I presume that Dwarven slayers is something quite original to Warhammer Fantasy[/i], for example.
And it seems obvious that, while borrowing things from many sources, the balance of influence of Warhammer's exiled dwarves isn't the same anyway as Tolkien's dwarves. Still,
Warhammer's dwarves have at last indirect perceptible more or less superficial sources of influence rooting from Semitic peoples (quite clearly and directly for Chaos Dwarves), including to Hebrews (mainly their diaspora-like communities in the Old World, their reputation of skilled craftsmen, the isolated reference to Zion and their quasi Promethean symbolism for a cult of Sigmar whose high priests even adopt Khazalid names and which looks more and more inspired by the Christian Catholic Church).
Veniam, Duelli Malleum, phantasticum ludum personae uidebo, in fera terra periculosorum aduenturorum ludebam.
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