Paul reshaping the church

[athrock]

I realize that you a from Protestant stock, but neither the Catholic Church nor any of the Orthodox Churches would agree with you (unless the latter did so in an attempt to weaken Peter's claim of universal supremacy...but that is for another thread).

Well they don't have to agree. Read One God One Lord by Larry Hurtado . It's considered an essential textbook by the majority of Biblical Colleges today, Hurtado is considered an expert, and it says first century Judaism was highly malleable - and by extension early Christianity. A view shared by many other scholars such as Bart Ehrman.

The evidence you're presenting suffers from clear selection-bias. You want to reject all the Gnostic texts because they were written outside the first century. That's the claim and the reasoning behind why Orthodox/Catholics/Protestants reject their validity about what they have to say about first century events. Therefore, if those can't be considered, neither can second century documents by church fathers that discuss first-century events. Without that you have zero evidence of who the head of the church was from 50AD onwards. Against Heresies is written more than a century after Peter and Paul died.

Of course I'm guilty of selection bias...because the Early Church was. If someone could not prove his apostolic succession, he was not considered a legitimate leader in the Church. And the same went for early writings, also.

This is NOT a problem. Atheists SCREAM that the gospels were written "late" and therefore are untrustworthy. So, you'll forgive me if I hold the gnostic gospels to the same (or higher) standard when it comes to insisting on early documents only.

All branches of Christianity that existed in the second century, whether Gnostic or Orthodox, claimed apostolic succession.

Indeed. Augustine noted the problem when he wrote, "...the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house" (Against the Letter of Mani Called "The Foundation" 4:5 [A.D. 397]).