My reading this morning took me to a passage about Absalom’s battles with his father’s men. The fight included one in a forest, and a description of how that forest took more men than the sword, jumped out at me. I was reminded of that scene in The Lord of the Rings where Gimli’s face told of a fear that the Fangorn Forest forbode, when he and his friends realised Merry and Pippin sought refuge there.

Earlier, I read of Joshua’s inheritance city of Timnath Serah and the name Minas Tirith emerged like an image in a mirror… that capital city of Gondor that was the scene of epic battles in The Return of the King had a name that so stuck in my mind that reading the name of Joshua’s city immediately conjured images of that multi-tiered behemoth that was besieged by Mordor’s mob.

I had to wonder… was Tolkien influenced by the Bible…