Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

"Authentic paul" doesn't actually mean that these are any pauls letters. It comes from the relationship between traditional attribution and the divergent styles or theologies of the other sets. A good example, especially since it's in your list above of authentic paul, is 2 corinthians. That's believed to be a composite - the underlying assumption being that it's a composite created out of some collection of some originals, which, while not the authors actual letters themselves, may have at least been dictated in some form at some time by that source. Probably compiled, even if we believe in a real paul, after that mans passing (and thus beyond his power to correct or denounce -just like the disputed and outright forgeries).

The search for the historical paul has been as much a failure as the search for a historical jesus, amusingly enough. The early church, for it's part, appears to have been aware of this business with the contents of those letters, btw..but, at the end of the day, the letters of some devout follower of pauls, in a "pauline style", were good enough for government work, so in they all went. To be fair, it makes plenty of sense in context (even though that context is nonsense, lol). It's really not of any importance to the faith or to the faithful - more an academic concern for people who want to know something other-than the contents of the faith - specifically in trying to study it's origin and development (and by extension, the developments of other belief sets as well). Thus "authentic paul" sounds to a believer or to the culturally indoctrinated to mean Real Pauls Real Letters..but it's understood by those researchers that they are not. Bit of cognitive engineering, if we were the cynical sort, eh.