Jesus Never Existed Com

[Confused Ape]

If there wasn't a real Paul, who authored the letters that are generally agreed upon to be his authentic work? I'm fairly certain that others before Marcion were aware of Paul and his epistles. This hypothesis seems to be grasping at straws.

I've spent many an hour looking into things such as did Marcion invent Paul or was it somebody earlier? Who wrote the letters which aren't generally agreed upon to be authentic? Did Marcion forge the originals of the inauthentic ones and were they then altered by Tertullian who denounced the Marcion heresy and declared Paul to be orthodox?

Tertullian. Five Books Against The Marcion Heresy


I think the point of Humphreys' approach is to indicate that skeptics need to evaluate their sources. If they don't they could end up with something like "Jesus was the fabrication of the non-existent Paul who was a pupil of Simon the Magus who mightn't have existed either." This wouldn't be very helpful when discussing Christianity with believers.