: Yes, he did return changed and more powerful. But yes, he
: DID die. He says that he "passed through fire and
: death", and Tolkien himself explicitly state in a
: few letters that Gandalf's body was destroyed: he
: died.
: Of course, being killed means that your soul lives on.
: For ainur this normally means that they rebuild their
: strength in order to create a new physical form, as
: Sauron, f'rinstance, does. Istari (Wizards), however,
: are different. They were actually incarnated into
: proper bodies, not merely the equivalent of
: "clothes", so as to better be able to fulfil
: their role of guiding the Children of Iluvatar. This
: unfortunately allowed them to also "age",
: albeit extremely slowly, get tired (Gandalf), and
: become corrupted by material desires (Saruman).
: It also meant that when they died, that was it for
: physical form. It was only by the grace of Eru,
: winesing Gandalf's selfless sacrifice, that he was
: granted another body by Eru himself, as stated by
: Tolkien.
w000000t more wonderful tolkein knowledge :)
Gandalfs new body was not someting i recall at ALL !
me luv u long time
