Tom Bombadil [merged]

I read many other theories about Bombadil. And only Tolkien would know the who or what is Tom Bombadil.
Last week I went to a conference of Joseph Pearce, author of Tolkien biography "Tolkien Man and Myth". It is a religious - catholic - point of view. And Joseph Pearce interpretation about Tom Bombadil was made in atention to Tolkiens christian faith and to the analogies between Tolkien literary work and Catholic faith, since the book of Genesis.

Some of his analogies are Genesis/Valaquenta; The characters of LOTR and Jesus Christ (the pain and suffer of Frodo, the sacrifice of Boromir, a new reign and King, etecetera); the temptations; and one analogies between Bombadil and the Eden Garden. The beggining of Middle-Earth where everything began - very spiritual theory.

By otherside, Joseph Pearce defines Bombadil as the "nature of Middle-Eart, the embodiment of the nature with his positive and negative things and with a total power inside his dominions but not ouside - Eden.

For more details I advise you to read the book..Its interesting 🙂

Ah..I share in part Joseph Pearce's theory about some kind of embodiment of nature, or in my opinion the embodiment of the Spirit of Arda, the essence of Middle-Earth.

For a sinopse http://www.christiancurrent.com/national/full_story.php?article=1276

For the more agnosticals or cepticals, don't scare yourselves with the
the spirituality of that site. Tolkien's biography by Joseph Pearce is an excellent work.
😛

You know what the biggest riddle is for me, when Frodo gave the Ring to Tom, why didn't he disappear and why didn't the ring influence him???

INteresting quote from Roverandom:

"If Rover had not been so busy barking at the balls he might have notived the blue feather stuck in the back of the green hat, and then he would have suspected that the man was a wizard, as any other sensible little dog would; but he never saw the feather at all."

BOmbadil is also wearing a blue feather on his hat

hmmmm 😄 ROVERRANDON IS GREAT

Yes he is... i loved the book... especially the wizards 😄

Never read it. whats itt about?

a wizaed turns some guy into a dog 😛 its cool

Turns a dog into a toy 😉

And the adventures of the toydog... quite funny to read...

Tom Bombadil is pure alligory. you're not ment to question who he is...
he's just there to show you that some things are outside the realm of influence.

but to take on a few theories...

1.Tom is the witchking?
no! that makes no sense. the witchking is a slave to sauron, not an employee who get's to go home to his wife after a long day of chasng hobbits, harrasing saruman, and knocking grima of his horse!!!

2.Tom is a wizard?
nope, if he were the ring would be too powerful for him to not be corupted by it. besides which, the 5 istari who came to middle earth have been accounted for. and wizards don't get married.

3.Tom is Eru?
this is the most popular, but i don't buy it. i have no real secure argument for it, making it the most plausable. At the most I could only accept that Tom is more of an Avatar of Erus' or something and that the forest was the limmit of is earthly realm.

as for me, Tom like Beorn and Huan are just strange characters that show up to illustrate there are more creatures and peoples out there than the focus of the stories centered around.

Tom Bombadil aka Iarwain Ben-adar is Maiar more like the other extreme of Sauron where he is bad and Tom is somewhat jovial

He's definately NOT the witch king. I have to lean towards Ilivutar, or JRR himself.

WITCH KING WITCH KING!

Murazor!

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggg

WITCH KING!

Witchy Rules!!!!!!!!!!

I have spend forever in disscussions on this forum and on others, and in real life trying to disscern who Tom is, and the Witch King is one of the only theories that has alot of info supporting it. It is unlikely and highly unprobable, but let me ask u...... M.E. it's self is highly unprobable. I myself have dual beliefs in Tom. 1. He is the Witch King. 2. He is Tolkien.

Tolkein purposly did not tell us who Tom was. Tolkien is a genious and if he wanted us to know who Tom was he would have told us somewhere. I am positive the only ppl who actually know are Tolkien and his son, and I dont' think ol' Chris is gonna be telling us anytime soon!!!

he is NOT eru

eru NEVER had physical form

witchy was the one i chose to follw...it has credible info and is fun to believe

tom is NOT a maia, and all 5 istari have not been acounted for the two blue wizards are thought to have been killed by the rising darkness in the east or to hav turned evil themselves and become mystic leaders of southrons

hummmmm another possibility......... tom is the moth!

if tom is the witch king.... his wife is nazgul nr 2?
mmmmmmm i don't think they are related...
plus the nine died (well, they were dead, i mean disappeared or sth like that) with sauron's fall, and after all that happened gandalf was going to have a long 'chat' with tom
there are many riddles, and i don't think all of them have answers...

the long chat he never seemed to mention ever again that had no details about it....because there was no tom as he DIED

Excuse me??? I was under the impression that he was hiding out in the south pole!

im sorry but please give the Lord of the Nazgul & ruiner of the Northern Kingdoms a little more fashion sense than to wear yellow & blue togther PLEASE!! 😛

seriously, there is no way TRom Bombadil is the witch king on his day off, the Witch King would have taken the Ring when frodo gave it to him pure and simple.

Bombabdil is an enigma, and suposed to be, its been said he is supposd to reprasent Tolkien or even the reader of the book itself, a person who wishes the heros well but is outside the bounds of the story.
its also said Tolkien put him in as a fancy to please his children who were told the adventure of Tom Bombadil while they grew up.

you have to remeber that Tom is in book 1 of the LOTR which Tolkien wrote thinking he was just writing a much shorter sequel to the Hobbit aimed more at children, thus he put some fantastical characters in it, like he did with beorn or the Trolls in The Hobbit, its only later that the scope of the book was expanded to make it fit into his Middle Earth more that it took on a more adult theme.

If yoy HAVE to have an explination of him, even one Tolkien himself was not prepared to create then I supose he must be some kind of ancient woodsprite or spirit of Middle Earth and goldberry is a water nymph of the withywindle river.

all in all the one thing he is not is the witch king, if he is the witch king he could also be any of the other characters in disguise, Aragorn? Legolas? Saruman? Bill the pony?

The ring has power over all of the ppl u just suggested. Tom is his own master and while there is enough evedience to support our theory there is little solid evedience against it.