I'm actually busy converting all my photocopies from the last 15 years into PDFs at the moment, so I haven't a lot of time! Here are a couple of points (which he would probably regard as incidental, but you asked).
The first bit that caught my eye was the "base rate of interpolation in Christian-controlled literature". The ostensible point of this section is to demonstrate that interpolations can happen in "Christian controlled literature". But since he includes Tacitus in that category, then all ancient literature pretty much is included. Which means that he is demonstrating ... what? That interpolations exist in ancient literature transmitted by copying? Or in literature that mentions Christians?
Candidly, I think I knew this already. For nobody disputes that interpolations exist. The question is whether a particular text has been interpolated. The numbers, valid or not, add nothing to that; in fact they looked somewhat like pseudo-statistics to me. You can't calculate the chance of interpolation in this way.
So what is the purpose of this section? The only purpose that I could see was polemical: to suggest that Christian literature is peculiarly prone to interpolation, or that Christians are prone to interpolate texts that have relevance to them. This is irrelevant to the subject of the paper.
What else struck me?
The section on Pliny the Younger. Pliny has never been present at a trial of Christians - although he knows they are an illegal group - and doesn't know what the procedure is, or what they believe. This, apparently, is evidence that Tacitus probably knew no more; and that this shows that the passage is interpolated? Unfortunately I fail to see the logical connection between these statements, even leaving aside the speculation involved. I think we can take it that a man who wrote a history took more pains in gathering data than a man in a hurry in a court case; but this, also, is speculation. We can speculate indefinitely.
Then onto Pliny the Elder, and this magnificent passage:
Pliny’s history would certainly have included his own account of the burning
of Rome in 64 a.d. and subsequent events. Most likely a resident of Rome
at the time, his information would have been first hand. He would surely have
recorded how it degenerated into the execution of scores if not hundreds of
Christians for the crime of burning the city of Rome, surely the single most
famous event of that or any adjacent year. If that in fact happened. And such
an account would surely have included any necessary digressions on the origins
of Christianity. We know, for example, Pliny believed Nero had started the
fire deliberately, lamenting in his Natural History that it destroyed ancient
trees invaluable to botanical science.
However, it is unlikely Pliny mentioned Christians in his account of the fire.
Because his nephew and adopted son Pliny the Younger was an avid admirer
and reader of his uncle’s works and thus would surely have read his account of
the burning of Rome, and therefore would surely have known everything about
Christians that Pliny the Elder recorded. Yet in his correspondence with Trajan,
Pliny indicates a complete lack of knowledge, making no mention of his uncle
having said anything about them, or about their connection in any way to the
burning of Rome (and yet, whether believed to be a false charge or not, that
would surely be pertinent to Pliny’s inquest, in many respects). Corroborating
this conclusion is the fact that no one else ever mentions, cites, or quotes Pliny
the Elder providing any testimony to Christ or Christians (as likely Christians
or their critics would have done, if such an invaluably early reference existed).
Can you count the number of "would have", "unlikely", and so forth, in this lengthy piece of speculation on the habits of two people dead 2,000 years?
If I felt so inclined, it would be fairly trivial to write an equally imaginary story, "explaining" exactly why Pliny the Younger never read whatever Pliny the Elder might have written; or that he did not in fact bother to mention, or whatever. We can all write fairy-stories around data.
Unfortunately I don't see the value of either fairy-story. Data is good; speculation is not.
I was mildly amused at the suggestion that Pliny the Younger read all that Pliny the Elder wrote. I doubt that this was humanly possible, considering what the former tells us about them. Likewise that he "must" have read his history. And we know this how?
But ... in the end, all this stuff amounts to construction work preparatory to an argument from silence. And my response to that is... no thank you.
Just my thoughts, of course, and it may be that I am missing the point. But I didn't see that any of this took the argument anywhere.
All the best,
Roger Pearse