Is Christianity based on older myths?

[Mudhammam]

I'm gonna have to say that theories which seriously suggest the figure of Paul to be a literary invention (of who exactly?) are pretty stupid. Paul clearly takes on a mythical portrayal in Acts, but the letters written in his name are deemed authentic by historians for pretty good reasons. Contrary to the way Christians read ancient documents, there are actually critical methods anyone can apply to determine what is likely to have basis in history, at least in its core, amidst the typical exaggerations, false recollections, metaphors, references, etc. that find their way into human writings. Paul is clearly a real person who has some authority in a premature, fragile, divided Hellenistic religion and has traveled throughout the region, probably at the expense of his fellow Christian cultists. He offers us many mundane details and clues that we would expect in an authentic letter rather than a work of literature disguised in letter form for the purposes of instruction by some unknown person. Even if it wasn't written by a person whose identity is really known, we can, as we do with most works of a similar nature, continue to cite the seven actual Pauline epistles as authored by a single individual, a Jew, in the Roman Empire during the first century, propagating a new cult, and for convenience sake call him Paul. It's not like we're talking about a cryptic sage here.