[Child of the 7th Age]

I am as fascinated by the discussion of Bilbo in Unfinished Tales as you are. But there is one thought that always comes popping into my head. Did Tolkien feel this way when he wrote The Hobbit, or even when he began to put pen to paper for the Lord of the Rings, or was this a much later revelation? Perhaps even a revelation that came in writng the final pages of the Return of the King.

How much of the hand of Providence was there in the beginning of the tale, and how much was a later addition? In view of the fact that Tolkien in his Letters clearly alludes to the fact that LotR was explicitly Christian 'in its revisions', exactly when did this make itself felt? There was another thread discussing this in books some time ago (started by Littlemanpoet), but we never really reached a conclusion.