Tolkien's Influence: Dark Lord

I realize this question may seem silly, or quaint as Tolkien's great influence on the fantasy Genre is well documented, and this may just be me understanding that reality profoundly for the first time, but anyways:

What are/Are there literary predecessors to Sauron/Morgoth as the Dark Lord/ all-encompassing Evil Overlords, or is that trope mostly solidified by Tolkien?

Just curious as I am having trouble thinking of too many predecessors for that archetype, Like Lucifer is clearly a big inspiration for Morgoth, but Christian mythology doesn't usually have him commanding armies unless it is talking about Revelation or something. Dracula kind of has the mix of spiritual evil/physical presence and tactical mind right, but he commands far fewer troops than what I'm thinking of. I guess it feels very strange to me as someone who encountered LotR/Star Wars and Harry Potter by the time I was 7 that the Evil Dark lord would be such a modern concept, especially now whereas someone who plays video games and reads some other fantasy I feel like I see Dark lords, demon kings and other varieties quite often.

It also has me thinking about the problem of Orcs, and how much people taking Sauron as a base model with lots of killable minions exacerbates the tensions between the narrative desire to have pure evil creatures in fantasy settings and the other desire to have other fantasy races (including orcs) to exhibit the same ranges of people and expression as human cultures.
 
Yes, the existence of ultimate spiritual evil as a physical presence, to the point of having its own territories and armies, is different from past mythologies. That is probably because past mythologies were actually meant to be 'realistic' in some sense. People needed to be able to have 'primary' belief in them. The Ancient Greeks really believed their gods existed, though better educated Greeks knew better than to expect actual physical gods to be living on Mount Olympus. And yet the monster Typhon that fought with Zeus was supposed to have been imprisoned beneath the volcano Mount Etna, and his occasional attempts to break free were the cause of the eruptions. There was a real physical 'presence' for this mythical monster, even though it was considered neutralized.

Mythological conflicts between ultimate good and evil were generally placed in a distant past and only some remnant like the unquiet volcano is expected in the physical world. There were other rebellions against Zeus, and many beings, mortal men or otherwise, were hurled into a metaphorical underground place, Tartarus, for offending against the gods. (Even if Zeus is an fairly ambiguous 'benevolent' god, he is 'the good guy' in Ancient Greek myths.) Remember, even the Christian Scriptures say there was 'war in heaven' and the rebels were cast out. Christian mythology (yes, it's a mythology) has its ultimate evil, 'the Devil', ruling an afterlife place of punishment that is metaphorically 'underground' but it's not expected to be a physically reachable place. Even Dante's version of it is too far away to have been reached by the travel technology of his time. Oddly enough, the god of the underworld in Greek mythology, Hades, is really not particularly evil. He is probably the closest to morally neutral of the major Greek gods. Much less ambiguous than his brother Zeus.

But if Ancient Greek mythology had placed a mythical 'kingdom' of evil in their contemporary real world, where would it be located? Someone might go wherever it was supposed to be and not find it... :)

On the one hand, Tolkien had an advantage over earlier constructors of mythologies. He knew his audience wasn't expecting it to correspond with the real world. They didn't need primary belief, only secondary belief. So he could make the ultimate spiritual evil have a physical realm and armies of its own just like the 'good guys'. And on the other hand, he concludes the story by ending the ability of this 'ultimate evil' to have direct presence and power in the physical world -- forever. Just as mythologies of the past did.
 
Remember, even the Christian Scriptures say there was 'war in heaven' and the rebels were cast out. Christian mythology (yes, it's a mythology) has its ultimate evil, 'the Devil', ruling an afterlife place of punishment that is metaphorically 'underground' but it's not expected to be a physically reachable place.

Where do we see Satan ruling an afterlife? Where he's described as having authority, it's as "the prince of this world". In regards to the afterlife, Matthew 25:41 (KJV) says, "Then shall [the King] say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:" Together these seem to make it rather clear that Satan is subject to, not governing, the punishment suffered by the wicked.
 
Interesting question! I never thought about it...

But the characters coming closest would , i guess, be in literature norse and celtic giant kings.I am thinking of Udgardloki, Balor the One-Eyed or Yspadadden Pencawr.
I mean... none of them is the pure incarnation of evil... but they are quasi-this-wordly , corporeal tyrant rulers in the far north, they have armies of trolls, monsters and giants, they are titanic figures sitting on thrones ruling cold or dark lands...

I think that is closer than Satan in hell. In truth it is probably a mix of many things and Satan as the deceiver mixed with Loki the bringer of Ragnarök and the Lord of Hell all had their parts.
 
There are so many layers to the 'popular' concepts of the Christian worldview that it gets confusing. Milton's Paradise Lost has a less restrictive view of Lucifer/Satan in exile. Remember "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven"? Exactly when the exiled rebel was assigned as God's 'punisher-in-chief' actually in charge of tormenting sinners is another question. He seems to have inherited/absorbed the role from Hades, who at least presided over the realm when the cursed dead were sent. (And maybe a bit from the Norse goddess Hela, who was neither servant of the chief of the gods nor a deliverer of any sort of 'punishment', but was an evil ruler of a realm of dishonored dead and sort-of a rebel, being the daughter of Loki, the main rebel among the gods.)

Anyway, the point of the comparison is that "Satan's Realm" is not supposed to be accessible by the still-living. At least not without some sort of supernatural help, as Dante claims to have gotten for his tour. The "Evil Dark Lord" is an ancient concept, it is putting his/her/its realm in the same physical space as ordinary mortals that is different. The why is as I have described, no longer needing primary belief means it no longer has to be located in a way to make finding it impossible.
 
Well... i wouldn't call Milton "christian" for example in the first place. I actually do not see any dark lord as ancient concept either... in my eyes it is a pretty new and "modern"concept actually...
 
OK,here's my two cents. One of the many problematics of Augustine and a long heritage in the intellectual West is to maintain that evil is only a privative, it does not really exist. This sounds profound, but actually it is a smokescreen for a two-step program... first deny that evil itself exists, then that its inventor and primary agent. But this assumes the devil/satan is a physical being. He is a spiritual being, as a former angel. Tolkien captures this in the Ringwraiths' ability to instill fear and dread. But my second point is that this being of immense negative power is a vicious enemy of mankind, of every human being. He hates us all. He is not just a dominator, although he uses his control to destroy us. This is far more hostile than even Tolkien portrays in Sauron. This is domination for a purpose: to destroy the eternal well being of every human. This more than just armies on a conquest of territory. It is an internal act hostile to the soul, to every personality as such. And this has been around since the beginning of time and history of humanity. And the Christian Church has taught this is THE enemy of mankind for 2000 years.
 
Well, Morgoth is the destroyer and nihilist.Sauron is just the controller and dominator. But yes, his dark lords being not only corporeal but incarnate is a big difference, though i believe the devil being only a spiritual being not a physical one is a pretty modern idea, that was not necessarily always the case.
 
Well, Morgoth is the destroyer and nihilist.Sauron is just the controller and dominator. But yes, his dark lords being not only corporeal but incarnate is a big difference, though i believe the devil being only a spiritual being not a physical one is a pretty modern idea, that was not necessarily always the case.
I have no idea where you come up with that conclusion. First, a spiritual being is far more dangerous by being supernatural and omnipresent, working from within. So "only" is misleading. Moderns tend to think of "spiritual" as being vaporous and abstract. Quite the contrary. In the original Greek, and in Slavonic and Orthodox English translations the Lord's Prayer ends: "...from the evil one", unlike the merely 400 year old KJV. So that dates back 2000 years. (Matt. 6:13) The "3-decker" universe is a simplistic Western medieval concept (see Dante) and is poor ersatz for the Orthodox Apostolic-Patristic understanding of Heaven and hell as states of spiritual being (eternal), which one chooses by one's way of life in the spatial-temporal. Again, 2000 years of continuity here. As an aside, I would point out that the phrase "daily bread" is a very weak and also Protestant rendering. "Essential bread" would be more accurate -- "epi-ousios" meaning according to our being, or nature... not merely having a regular breakfast... and refers to Holy Communion. Which radical Prots deny is the actual Body and Blood of the Saviour due to over-reacting against the RC scholastic-rationalist accidents-essence abstraction derived from Aristotle which recklessly tries to define a supernatural profound Mystery. I would agree with your distinction between Morgoth and Sauron.... as long as you don't mean Morgoth is just some grumpy intellectual "nihilist" academic theorist.
 
I would say a lot of modern Christian mythology/tradition (call it what you will) teaches a very different concept that what the Old Testament scholars/writers and early church founders would have understood of what we now call 'The Devil'. The idea of a singular evil entity governing a physical space and being the commander of armies and a domain of the dead appears to be drawn more from possibly the Greek conceptions of Hades and the Underworld and later. 'satan' simply means one who opposes or obstructs. In the Bible, Yahweh himself (in a physicalised form referred to as the 'Angel of the Lord') is referred to as a 'satan' when obstructing Balaam. It's less a name than a narrative role. But I don't want to hugely get into as it's more tangential than directly relevant. However, Tolkien is obviously writing from a modern Englishman's perspective with all that accumulated Miltonian influence. I am really trying to come up with a solid example of a thoroughly evil 'Big Bad' as it were, that predates Morgoth or Sauron though.
See my other post which is intended also to answer this post. Let's not compare God to the demonic satan (proper name)... the evil one is very much an opposer of all that is good and holy. It's not a matter of "simply". It is indeed an name and not just a "narrative role. Hades is not merely some image adopted from pagan Greek mythology. The Orthodox Fathers and Saints use it to refer to the state the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets were in until the "harrowing of hades" on Holy Saturday when the Saviour descended to wrest them out of the "limbo" (to use the Latin medieval term) they had been in. Hell, properly speaking is an eternal state of separation from God due to rejection of Him. Yes, Tolkien certainly had Milton somewhere off in the wings, but "the evil one" of the Lord's Prayer has been around to those who translate accurately for 200 years. That manuscript tradition is as "solid" as one could ever want.
 
In general, let me caution all and sundry against making risky pronouncements and conclusions on religious and spiritual matters without a reasonably thorough knowledge of Biblical texts, theology, Church history and spirituality. It's rather hasty, as Treebeard might say. I know folks mean well, but you know what they say about "good intentions".... Many folks think anyone can say anything about Christianity... Yes, but it can make one look rather foolish rushing in, where ... This is not a criticism, but sad experience talking!!
 
For the most important formative period of Church doctrine... at least from 300 AD to 900 AD -- and actually long before and after that -- the Hebrew text was largely unimportant. The Greek Septuagint was the standard text. As you know, achieved in the centuries before Christ, by Greek speaking Hebrews it is the Biblical text that formed the minds of the Apostolic and Patristic eras in both East and West (then a single Church). So appealing to a Hebrew text -- which, one has to note, became tampered with and corrupted early in Church history into the present Masoretic text (and thus unreliable compared with the Septuagint) until the discovery 70 years ago of the Dead Sea Scrolls -- is really rather pointless. The so-called Hebrew text, which you refer to as "classical" did not reliably exist for nearly 2000 years of the Church's existence. It was not preserved intact. And thus for the formation of Christian doctrine and liturgics (prayer) is virtually irrelevant. The Gospels were written in Greek and even quote the Septuagint. As you know, when the disciples thought and spoke, it was in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Probably only St. Paul was really fluent in Hebrew and even his letters are in Greek.
In any case, taking the word -- even if the text here is not problematic -- and asserting its common usage is more important than its use as a proper noun is actually inverting things. The word in Greek "diavolos" (from which we derive "devil") means slanderer, accuser is not the determinant of who or what satan the devil is, but who or what he is determines the choice of the word for his name. This kind of inverted thinking is typical of the post-Enlightenment so-called "higher Biblical criticism" which reduces the Scriptural text to a literary game -- designed not to enlighten, but to corrupt and demean -- to accuse to slander. I choose these designations intentionally. Theological realities are a priori to linguistic vagaries. You catch my drift, surely.
The religious West has fallen into this inversion of the hierarchies of values ever since Augustine first mistakenly relied on Neo-platonism for his thinking, rather than following the Orthodox Church Fathers in redefining philosophical terms to fit Christian revelation - whether of Platonic Ideas or Aristotelian Categories. The Western European Christian tradition, heritage has been misguided ever since Charlemagne and his scholars rediscovered the long forgotten Augustine at the turn of the 9th c. in order to give their pretensions to being The Empire a veneer of intellectual and religious authority. This then was inherited by the papacy as it set itself up in schismatic rivalry to the other four Patriarchates. And thus the West was set on the path to rationalist heresy (corrupt theology), dissolution and loss of credibility. Too long and complex a story to rehearse here.
 
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. I would agree with your distinction between Morgoth and Sauron.... as long as you don't mean Morgoth is just some grumpy intellectual "nihilist" academic theorist.

That philosophical or political nihilism was not what i was referring to. Melkor is all about proving Eru wrong, he wants to prove that God is wrong, failable and creation is in itself essentially wrong.That is because of his frustration and envy of being just a lesser demiurge, he does not want to rule or dominate the world or men, though he does so or tries, but only as a tool in his great idea of annihilation of what he believes is a false god and a wrong creation... therefore nihilism.
 
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Well... i wouldn't call Milton "christian" for example in the first place. I actually do not see any dark lord as ancient concept either... in my eyes it is a pretty new and "modern"concept actually...

Well, that's a head-scratcher. How is John Milton "not a Christian"? He was a staunch Puritan (actually considered something of an extremist) for his entire life. His most famous work is precisely about the Christian world-view. Who decides what is 'Christian' of not?
 
.The religious West has fallen into this inversion of the hierarchies of values ever since Augustine first mistakenly relied on Neo-platonism for his thinking, rather than following the Orthodox Church Fathers in redefining philosophical terms to fit Christian revelation - whether of Platonic Ideas or Aristotelian Categories. The Western European Christian tradition, heritage has been misguided ever since Charlemagne and his scholars rediscovered the long forgotten Augustine at the turn of the 9th c. in order to give their pretensions to being The Empire a veneer of intellectual and religious authority. This then was inherited by the papacy as it set itself up in schismatic rivalry to the other four Patriarchates. And thus the West was set on the path to rationalist heresy (corrupt theology), dissolution and loss of credibility. Too long and complex a story to rehearse here.

It is quite a stretch i think, these are about 1000 years you say the western church was "wrong".
 
I would say a lot of modern Christian mythology/tradition (call it what you will) teaches a very different concept that what the Old Testament scholars/writers and early church founders would have understood of what we now call 'The Devil'. The idea of a singular evil entity governing a physical space and being the commander of armies and a domain of the dead appears to be drawn more from possibly the Greek conceptions of Hades and the Underworld and later. 'satan' simply means one who opposes or obstructs. In the Bible, Yahweh himself (in a physicalised form referred to as the 'Angel of the Lord') is referred to as a 'satan' when obstructing Balaam. It's less a name than a narrative role. But I don't want to hugely get into as it's more tangential than directly relevant. However, Tolkien is obviously writing from a modern Englishman's perspective with all that accumulated Miltonian influence. I am really trying to come up with a solid example of a thoroughly evil 'Big Bad' as it were, that predates Morgoth or Sauron though.

Actually, the Church Fathers regarded 'ha-satan' ('the accuser') as a servant of God, not the opposition. Just like in the book of Job, it was God's perogative to test people, and 'ha-satan' was one of his chosen agents for doing so. The emphasis on a truly opposing power seems to have arisen as a way to compensate for the appeal of Manichaeism, which was a real competitor to Christianity in the early days before they got an Emperor to assign their religion as the State religion. The famous title of the devil "Prince of Darkness" is actually the title of the evil god of Manichaeism.
 
As i always understood the angels in the old testament are corporeal beings.They do have (well some had) sexual intercourse with mortal women and sired corporeal children and for a long time this was perceived as being true. I do not deny that this changed in the early history on the church, but i believe it was due to platonic and aristotelian influence. Intellectual paganism had already largely abondoned that concept for quite some time.I do not know much about early judaism though... it would not surprise me if they had done that too but i do not see it in early christianity completely yet, to my perception at last.
 
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