The manuscript itself provides definite clues to the dating. For one thing, since this is on Merton College stationery, it cannot be earlier than 1945 (when Tolkien moved from Pembroke to Merton). The spelling of the Quenya text is also interesting: we repeatedly have c rather than k, and the word quanta "full" provides an example of qu rather than q. Students of Tolkien’s languages will know that in the pre-LotR period, Tolkien usually wrote q, k rather than qu, c (indeed the name of the language itself was spelt "Qenya"). Various philological clues, discussed in detail in the Lexical Commentary below, seem to suggest that this text is not younger than the LotR Appendices (in particular, see the entry for the word ilaurëa concerning the element aurë). This takes us to 1955 or later, but not later than 1959-60 (when a certain phonological feature, found in the Etymologies of the thirties but apparently abandoned in the text before us, seems to have been re-instituted – see the entry care in the Lexical Commentary). The word #massa (rather than masta) for bread also points to the fifties; see the entry massamma. Instead of the word ontaril for mother, begetter we might have expected *nostaril based on a last-minute change Tolkien did in the final volume of LotR (SD:73); this may suggest that our text (slightly?) predates this minute change. If we date this text to 1955, we shall probably not err much. It may be a little earlier, but not much: the word ëa occurring in this text does not seem to have entered Tolkien’s mythos before 1951 (see LR:338, MR:7, 31 regarding Ëa or Eä as a name of the universe). The word #ála "do not" incorporates -la as a negative element "not", but "possibly soon after the publication of The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien abandoned this element (see VT42:32). He reintroduced it in the last years of his life, but this text is certainly older than ca. 1970. All things considered, it seems quite unlikely that Tolkien made these translations earlier than 1951 or later than 1955.
3. Syntactical/Analytical Commentary: The Textual Context Analysed
I. THE LORD’S PRAYER
Átaremma i ëa han ëa ·
Our father who art in heaven,
It is not quite certain that this traditional English wording of the prayer actually corresponds to the Quenya text, though it certainly begins with the words "our Father who art…": Átaremma "our father", sc. #átar "father" (other sources have atar with a short a) + -mma "ours", with a connecting vowel -e- slipped in between the noun and the ending to avoid an impossible consonant cluster. This ending -mma denotes an exclusive "our"; átaremma is not used for "our father" when his children are talking about him among themselves (that is *átarelma), but when they are addressing another party that is not among his children: In this case, it is the father himself that is being addressed. i "who", relative pronoun. ëa "is" or "exists", han a hitherto unknown word that according to the normal English wording of the prayer ought to be the preposition "in" (though it is wholly dissimilar to the normal word for "in", mi). See the Lexical Commentary for further discussion of this word[5]. The second ëa would correspond to "heaven". If this is a noun, it would have to be equated with Eä, the well-known Quenya name of the created universe, despite the fact that in the text before us it is not capitalized. This word is a surprising choice as a translation for "heaven"; Tolkien did not even use it when translating "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" a few lines down. If han is a preposition, it would seem to somehow describe Eru’s position in relation to Eä, and in light of the normal wording of the prayer, Eru must in some sense be "in" Eä. Perhaps han may mean something along the lines of "permeating"? Yet in what precise sense Eru is present within Eä was something of a mystery even to the inhabitants of Middle-earth, as is evident from the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (MR:322: "How could Eru enter into the thing [Eä] that He has made, and that which He is beyond measure greater? … He is already in it, as well as outside…but indeed the in-dwelling and the out-living are not in the same mode… So may Eru in that mode be present in Eä that proceeded from him"). Of course, when trying to interpret a translation of a text that belongs to our world rather than Tolkien’s invented world, attempting to glean information from his mythos may be beside the point. Perhaps Tolkien simply meant to say something like *"our Father who is in (?) the universe". It should be noted, though, that there is an old Gnomish text that seems to feature a preposition han = "above" (see the relevant entry in the Lexical Commentary below for reference). If this is what han means here, Tolkien would seem to have rephrased "who art in heaven" to "who art above the universe", perhaps because people within his mythos "did not conceive of the sky as a divine residence" (Letters:204; cf. the entry Erumande in the Lexical Commentary).
Another, even more ingenious interpretation could be that Tolkien here did not translate "who art in heaven", but substituted another Bible-based phrase, namely God’s self-designation "I am that I am" or "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14; Hebrew `ehyeh `asher `ehyeh). Could Tolkien have re-phrased the first line of the prayer as *"our Father who art that thou art"? This would allow us to interpret ëa as a verb in both of its occurrences. If this is so, han would have to mean something like *"that" or *"that which". However, this theory seems difficult to maintain, even apart from the fact that a devout Catholic would hardly feel free to significantly rephrase the Lord’s Prayer. If i ëa han ëa is to mean *"who art that thou art", the second ëa would be expected to include a second person pronominal ending (probably -lye), but no such suffix is present. Moreover, such an interpretation would require that ëa can be used as a copula (like ná), but our few examples hint that this is not so. The verb ëa (also spelt eä) may be translated "is", but we have no example of it being used to connect a subject with a noun or an adjective; rather it means "exists", and so Tolkien translated it in at least one case (VT39:7). Hence in Cirion’s Oath (UT:305, 317) we have the sentence i Eru i or ilye mahalmar eä, "the One who is above all thrones": Eru exists in this sublime position; or ilyë mahalmar "above all thrones" may here be seen as an adverbial phrase rather than a predicate. No matter how we interpret the precise syntax, this example indicates that ëa rather than ná is used for "is" when a subject is to be connected to a prepositional phrase denoting a position. It seems most reasonable, then, to assume that Átaremma i ëa han ëa is another example of this, and that this means something along the lines of *"our Father who is in Eä" (though the precise meaning of han, that we take to be a preposition of some sort, must remain as uncertain as the spatial relation between Eru and Eä)[6].
6
VT43 takes i ëa han ëa as meaning "who is beyond Eä", which would certainly not be a direct translation of "who is in heaven". If this is the correct interpretation, it is still surprising that the second ëa is not capitalized as Eä or Ëa, to identify it as a proper name.