The Gospels as Fact

I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legend. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly….Apart from the bits of the Platonic dialogues, there are no conversations that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence.

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“What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?” in God in the Dock, 158-59. Originally published in Asking them Questions, ed. Ronald Selby Wright (Oxford University Press, 1950), 47-53.