Advice to Christian Apologists (Part 9)

Something will usually have to be said about the historicity of the Gospels. You who are trained theologians will be able
do this in ways which I could not. My own line was to
say that I was a professional literary critic and I thought I did know the difference between legend and historical writing:
that the Gospels were certainly not legends (in one sense they're not good enough) :  and that if they are not history then they are realistic prose fiction of a kind which actually never existed before the eighteenth century. Little episodes such as Jesus writing in the dust when they brought Him the woman taken in adultery [John 8:3-8] (which have no doctrinal significance at all) are the mark.
C.S. Lewis, "Christian Apologetics" (1945) included in God in the Dock (Eerdmans, 1970) 101.

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