No, it gives us much more, and Tolkien himself, in the epilogue to his essay, explains why. In an argument similar to the one that helped persuade his friend C. S. Lewis on Addison’s Walk by the River Cherwell in Oxford years before, he argues that the gospel story of Jesus is not simply one more great story, pointing to the underlying Reality.75 Rather, the gospel story of Jesus is the underlying Reality to which all the stories point. It gives us more than a passing inspiration because it is the true story; it happened.
