had access to all the texts, he might have produced a substantially different work. In his foreword to The Book of Lost Tales 1 in 1983, he wrote that In October 1996, Christopher Tolkien commissioned the illustrator Ted Nasmith to create full-page full-colour artwork for the first illustrated edition of The Silmarillion. It was published in 1998, and followed in 2004 by a second edition featuring corrections and additional artwork by Nasmith. Influences The Silmarillion was influenced by many sources. A major influence was the Finnish epic Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo. Influence from Greek mythology is also apparent in the way that the island of Númenor recalls Atlantis, and the Valar borrow many attributes from the Olympian gods. The Valar, like the Olympians, live in the world, but on a high mountain, separated from mortals; The correspondences are only approximate; the Valar are also influenced by Norse mythology, with characteristics resembling various of the Æsir, the gods of Asgard. Thor, for example, physically the strongest of the gods, can be seen both in Oromë, who fights the monsters of Melkor, and in Tulkas, the physically strongest of the Valar. Manwë, the head of the Valar, exhibits some similarities to Odin, the "Allfather". Tolkien also said that he saw the Maia Olórin (Gandalf) as an "Odinic wanderer". The influence of the Bible is seen in the conflict between Melkor and Eru Ilúvatar, a parallel of Lucifer's with God. Further, the creation and fall of the Elves parallels the Genesis account of the creation and fall of Man. As with all of Tolkien's works, The Silmarillion allows room for later Christian history, and one draft even has Finrod speculating on the necessity of Eru's eventual Incarnation to save mankind. Verlyn Flieger sees the influence of medieval Christian cosmology especially in the account of the creation of the universe as the manifestation of a sort of song sung by God with which the angels harmonize until the fallen angel introduces discord. St. Augustine's writings on music, as well as the extensive medieval tradition of the divine harmony—more familiar to us today in the notion of the "music of the spheres"—served as bases for this telling of creation. Scholars such as Dimitra Fimi have documented the influence of Celtic mythology in the exile of the Noldorin Elves, borrowing elements from the story of Irish legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Welsh influence