Theism and the Problem With Animal Suffering

In English, we can refer to someone who was not a historical individual without raising the question of his historicity. If you're considering an Old Testament figure like Adam or Jonah, what you have to do is go to the source text and say how does this source text function. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, the source text is the stories written by Arthur Conndoyle, and it's clear their fiction.