Tolkien Refutes Source Criticism

In this essay, I want to talk about how J.R.R. Tolkien refutes source criticism.

My family and I started listening to The Lord of the Rings, and as we were listening to the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, something fascinating caught my attention. Tolkien goes out of his way to state that, although he knows the story was written during World War II, it has nothing to do with World War II.

At first glance, you might ask what is so interesting about that—he is simply stating that his book is not about World War II. Yes, on the surface it is just that. But consider what happens when you apply that insight—that an author’s book has nothing to do with the primary historical event happening in the world around him—to the methods of biblical source criticism.

What Source Criticism Assumes

What is source criticism? It is an interpretive tool used in reading the Bible, typically practiced by more liberal, mainline scholars. It sees as part of its primary task reading these ancient texts to get at the sources behind them. That is step one: discovering the written or oral sources the biblical authors were working with. Step two is reconstructing the Sitz im Leben, the setting in life—the specific historical situation that supposedly produced these texts.

The most famous example is the JEDP hypothesis for the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Scholars argue that four distinct sources lie behind the text, claiming we can identify them, trace them back to their historical origins, and understand why they were produced. The underlying assumption is that if we can reconstruct who these authors were and what was happening in their historical moment, we can infer why they wrote this material.

Of course, biblical authors did use sources. Luke explicitly tells us that he consulted sources, and the book of Kings repeatedly cites the court records and chronicles it drew upon. But most of the time, source critics are not talking about sources we actually know about, sources that are explicitly referenced and for which we have hard data. Instead, they deal in inferred sources.

The main methodological problem is that whenever scholars encounter a difference in the text—a difference in language, a shift in grammar, or an alternate theme—they conclude, “Oh, well, this must be another source.” They equate literary difference with difference of authorship or source. That move is already extremely problematic on its face.

Tolkien’s Challenge to Historical Reductionism

This is where Tolkien’s insight becomes so devastating. Tolkien knew that people would immediately connect The Lord of the Rings to World War II. He would not have bothered warning readers against associating the story with the war unless there were obvious connections that could easily be made. You can readily understand why readers would draw that parallel: the titanic battle between good and evil, the desperate war against an overwhelming dark power, and the historical timing of its composition. You look at those elements and think, “Oh yes, there are obvious connections there.” Yet Tolkien says: do not make that connection.

Now think about how source critics operate. They look back thousands of years and claim: “We understand who these people were, and this historical situation is why they wrote.” Yet here in the modern period, we have an actual author whom we know intimately, and he directly tells us: “I know you might think that, but that is not why I wrote.” Why shouldn’t we apply that exact same logic to ancient authors?

Transcending the Current Moment

There is an even deeper insight here, which touches on one of the most profound and problematic issues in how literature is taught and read today. One of the fundamental features of human beings, made in the image of God, is the ability to transcend the current moment. Whether you speak of the soul, the mind, the imagination, or rationality, God has endowed us with the capacity to rise above mere animalistic causal sequence. Animals exist entirely within that chain of physical cause and effect. Humans, by contrast, possess memory and imagination, which allow us to rise above the immediate creational sphere, direct our attention elsewhere, and imagine entirely different worlds and places.

Yet contemporary literary criticism often presupposes that we already know what every text is really about. We see this today in feminist readings and neo-Marxist interpretations of literature, where critics believe they must uncover underlying power struggles. They act as what I like to call “transgression treasure hunters.” They approach a piece of literature asking: “Who is the class in power? Who are the oppressed? What does the text reveal about their power dynamics?”

When we read like that, the work itself is completely lost. The particularity of the author’s vision vanishes. One of the defining marks of great, enduring literature is precisely its power to rise above its immediate historical circumstance—to perform that genuinely human act of imaginative genius that transcends the moment. It is like standing up in a field of sunflowers: suddenly your vision clears the stalks, and you see a mountain over there and a lake over there. An author wants to speak about that mountain and that lake, bringing them together in fresh ways to construct an imaginative world.

Naturally, that imaginative world bears some relation to the historical era in which the author lived. But the great, humane gift of art is its ability to step outside its own world and enter another.

When we reduce literature to mere historical causes, we lose the ability to see what is right in front of us. C.S. Lewis had a wonderful phrase for this: he observed that people have become so clever at reading between the lines that they can no longer read the lines themselves. The actual object, structure, and nature of the work are lost.

Because literature is fundamentally about human beings, that critical habit eventually atrophies our ability to understand real people. We begin to assume we always know what another person is really about, reducing them to their social category or historical setting, and we refuse to let them be the unique individuals they actually are. Tolkien’s prologue provides a striking reminder that we should respect the integrity of a text, an insight we desperately need when reading both ancient scriptures and modern works of art.

Watch the original episode.