Quote: No, what I should have said is that we don't even need 2nd century accounts because the primary evidence of the historicity of Paul is found in the epistles themselves
Danny, we have no idea what the original documents even said. We first hear of them from Marcion's canon but Marcion was a heretic as far as the eventual winners of this struggle were concerned. Do you seriously think that documents he put forward were accepted by the proto-orthodox without a rewrite to make them doctrinally safe for their point of view?
How can you assert the historicity of a document that you have never seen?