Is Christianity based on older myths?

[Mudhammam]

Interesting.

I get the idea that there may have been one author and so just call him "Paul". But I'm thinking that someone at that time could just write a bunch of stuff, write some letters, creating the character of "Paul" as the author. It's quite possible they'd have the knowledge to make the character convincing. It doesn't mean that they actually did any of the things they described, does it?

As I said I'm unsure about this one. What I'm asking is, is there good reason to think the author of Paul actually did any of the things he said or actually sent letters regarding stuff he had done and not just made up? Obviously him or someone else was adding stuff to it on the supernatural end, or else Paul was mentally ill.

If this was just "the kind of thing this kind of person might do" then that seems suspiciously indistinguishable from a fiction. Are there independent sources outside of the bible which back him up?

I won't try to psychoanalyze a figure who's been dead for nearly two millennia, but it wouldn't be that surprising if Paul had a mental illness---he was clearly a mystic of sorts and those types often do suffer from some condition, though there is clearly cogency in much of his thought. It's also important to keep in mind that a first-century person involved with any mystery cult would use symbolic or esoteric language to convey a spiritual truth that his audience would understand but outsiders likely would not, so perhaps we should not always take him so literally; and also, it wasn't strange to believe that gods communicated to people through ordinary means---dreams, thoughts, other people---so he may also be simply relating experiences that he believed were divine but that wouldn't have been particularly uncommon, even for other believers in or out of his Greek and Jewish religious context.

In terms of independent sources, we have all of the pseudographic material forged in his name (and included in the New Testament) between the latter quarter of the first-century and the first quarter of the second, which suggests using his name would have carried authority, and I can really see no good reason for this other than that Paul was really the person contained within his own (alleged) writings and eventually mythologized in Acts. That Acts corresponds with some events Paul mentions may allow us to grant that it contains some kernels of historical truth, taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Outside of the New Testament we have Clement's epistle written at the end of the first-century which mentions Paul, his epistles, and again relates some of the things Paul says about his hardships in spreading Christianity. Ignatius, who died in 110 C.E., also mentions Paul through his letters, as does Polycarp, though writing in the first half of the second-century.

There may be more but those are the ones I know about.