Posted: Jan 15, 2017 1:24 am
That interesting proposition is premised with the hypothesis that the Christians existed before Constantine's propaganda, legal, social, military and literature campaign. The OP is focussed on the archaeological evidence underpinning this hypothesis.
What if this hypothesis, believed [by practically everyone] to be true by an implicit reliance upon the literature and manuscript "evidence"
(lovingly preserved by the descendant organisations of the original c.325 CE Nicene Church Organisation),
is NOT supported by the archaeological evidence
(but rather various forms of "confirmation bias" [of the literary evidence])?
Where does that leave us?
I can try to answer that.
It leaves us with the documents alone.
And with our guide, THE authoritative master of the Early Christian literary evidence, "Eusebius".
We seem to have an "Early Christianity" populated by a "Divine Institute" that became a church with Bishops writing INTER-OFFICE MEMOS to one another about the heretics, Apologists writing letters to Roman Emperors, Saints and Martyrs on every street corner persecuted by those nasty pagan Emperors. We seem to have some form of "Nationalistic Literature" for the "New and Strange", yet quite clearly victorious, "Nation of Christians".
In the evaluation of the [historical] TRUTH VALUE of all this Christian nationalistic literature ["literary evidence"]
it is, alas,
IN "EUSEBIUS" WE TRUST.
There is no other guide.
Unless there is an archaeologist in the house with some evidence.