"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till."

I think that there was another Tolkien in the 4th century with a similar grasp of culture, myth and symbol, who compiled the New Testament, but never got around to labeling it as fiction.