Yes it does. Here's why ...
Here's the thing, a significant part of Moss' presentation is her critical realist historiography. To just dismiss her because you think she's a "liberal" or "rejects persecution" misses the larger point, and is pretty anti-intellectual.
One, that's not why I dismiss her, and for you to make such an assumption is in and of itself anti-intellectual. A researcher's work is measured against previous work. She rejects the history of the church detailing the persecution and martyrdom recorded in the early second through the late third centuries before Rome and the Catholic Church officially merged. She claims these are not well documented nor well founded, yet she bases this premise on the fact that there is no "outside historical resource."
This is the reasoning fallacy of many who dismiss early church history as "unfounded." They fail to consider that the most educated people of the second through the fourth centuries were church officials. In fact, they were the only ones getting a formal and well-rounded education, and were among the few elite who were being taught to write. It is understandable that church historians and commentators of the time are the only men who left us an historical record, because they were the only ones who could offer an alternate perspective to the Roman Empire's own historians, and the only ones interested in preserving the stories of those who died defending their faith.
The text is important if for no other reason than she articulates a philosophy of history (historiography) that has been growing in respected circles of academia (including several major evangelical seminaries) and will probably dominate much of historical research in the next generation. Her articulation is not itself original but it is well articulated.
Growth in respected circles is not a criteria for judging the validity of academic endeavor. Such is how we have "embraced" evolution in our time. Because such "well-educated men" in such "well-respected circles of academia" have judged it true, well ... it
has to be true. But it is obvious to any who study the reasoning of evolutionary theory that there is no reasoning behind it, nor is there any valid science behind it. It is all sheer speculation that has been kept afloat by a constant redefining of the parameter of the study of the theory, so it remains viable under "current scientific thought." It isn't, and neither, for the same reasons, is Moss' work.
As for the foundationalist reply, here we're talking about the epistemological aspect of historical inquiry. If you're going to critique Moss from a classical foundationalist position you need to ready to understand her larger coherence model. If you don't understand either, do you really think you're in a position to call her out for "sticking their fingers in their ears and babbling 'nanananana ... can't hear you!'"
Yes, I am, because as I said, a new, broadened theory does not make a theory valid, it only expands the parameters under which the theory can be propped up to appear to remain viable. She has ignored hard facts and expanded parameters in order to remain cogent, when the reality is, she alters the argument in such a way that it is no longer the same discussion. You know who else is good at this? Those aforementioned doctoral awardees who deny the Holocaust.We're back to square one. None of the expansion of theories and alteration, or outright rejection, of facts can make her denial of early church persecution valid.
