Originally Posted by JHS

Dear Dr Brown,

I have now had the referee's report on your article, which I attach.
As you will see, they are unable to recommend publication in JHS, so I am afraid that we will not be able to publish the piece.
I hope the reports are self-explanatory and helpful.
I am sorry the outcome has not been happier,
but I am grateful to you for thinking of JHS as a place to publish.
Yours sincerely,
Angus Bowie
________________________________________
Dr A.M. Bowie,
Lobel Praelector in Classics.
Editor of the Journal of Hellenic Studies.
The Queen's College, Oxford, OX1 4AW.

REFEREE'S REPORT on THESIS


BROWN ON CONSTANTINE’S INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY

This is a revival of the theses of Athanasius Kircher and the AbbÈ Hardouin, who (in the hope of disarming the protestant appeal to primitive Christianity) argued that the whole corpus of ancient literature, including the Fathers, up to about 900 A.D. is a forgery. The reasoning of Kircher was based on the absence of numismatic corroboration for the written testimonies. The argument has never been regarded as anything more than a curiosity, since it presupposes a quite stupendous power of obliteration which the rulers of ancient empires could not have possessed. Furthermore, the argument is based almost entirely on the absence of substantiating evidence rather than on positive contradiction of the scribal record in the archaeological remains. Even if such positive contradiction were discovered, it would not of course be decisive, as inscriptions and coins can be at least as duplicitous as books – more so, perhaps, since the very production of them is an indication that the author is in a position of power and means to retain it.

The present work improves on Hardouin and Kircher, of course, in its knowledge of epigraphic sources, and some of these, for all I know, may be handled here with originality. The paucity of epigraphic evidence for early Christianity is, of course, commonly admitted, but this has not led most scholars to argue that the entire corpus of Christian literature before 325 is a fabrication. If it were, one would have expected the forgers to carry out the enterprise with some doctrinal consistency: why fabricate heretical writings in the name of Origen, for example, while continuing to appeal to his authority? Why compose the gospels in a homely and obscure idiom which could not fail to bring the authors into disrepute among cultivated readers? Why were “orthodox” writers after Nicaea repeatedly embarrassed by the discovery of tenets contradictory to their own in venerable predecessors?

Archaeological data are never self-interpreting, and since they are generally fortuitous survivals they are even less likely to be representative than the literary texts that have been handed down to us by a deliberate process of canonisation. The assumption that they can be used to construct a history independent of literary sources is surely fallacious. The fundamental fallacies are compounded in this book by wilful embellishment of such textual evidence as the author deigns to adduce in support of his case. Julian is accusing the evangelists of fiction, rather than imputing a wholesale forgery to Constantine (whom he would have incriminated if he could); Constantine’s admission that the Sibylline oracles were accused of forgery is hardly proof that the authenticity of all other texts had been impugned. The scholarship is certainly superior to that of The Da Vinci Code, and the boldness of the argument will guarantee it a hearing, but not any distinguished organ of academic research.

Originally Posted by mountainman

...
(1) Whether the referee actually understands my thesis.