Being agnostic in regards to the historicity of St. Paul is justifiable.

Pro says "Acts indicates Paul is an apostle, but the epistles never do so." Really? Paul identified himself as an Apostle in 1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1, etc. Which NT was Pro reading? Yes, "One can accept some of what someone says without accepting all of what they have to say," but Pro ignores what his own source has to say on the very same subject he quotes him on! Bias? Pro has not yet told us why we should take Carrier so seriously when he agrees with Pro but disregard him when he disagrees with him. "Those arguments were only about the prior probability," he says, but the probability that Paul existed begins very high. To quote one of Pro"s sources: "Jesus belongs to several myth-heavy reference classes. He is a worshipped savior deity. He is a legendary culture hero. He is a Rank-Raglan hero. And he is a revelatory archangel (already as early as the earliest writings we have, granting the letters of Paul are such). All of those classes of person already start with a high prior probability of being mythical, because most members of them are mythical (or for culture heroes, about even). And these are beings all of whom are claimed to be historical, yet are usually in fact mythical. Just like Jesus. Paul does not belong to any such class. Paul thus falls into the class of ordinary persons who wrote letters and had effects on history. In ratio, most of such people claimed to exist, actually existed. By far. The mistake being made then is that people assume the starting prior for anyone claimed to exist is "50/50R43; (agnosticism) but we know for a fact that that is not true. Examine thousands of cases, and you will find persons claimed to exist, overwhelmingly actually existed. Only a small proportion didn"t. That entails that for any random person claimed to exist that you pick out of a hat, the prior odds are quite high they actually existed (On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 6.2 and 6.5). To challenge that starting point, you need to show that Paul belongs to a reference class whose members are most often mythical (or at least half of whose members are). No one has done this. And it won"t be easy to." http://freethoughtblogs.com... Here Carrier gives good reason to disagree with Pro, but Pro likes to quote sources that disagree with him, like Britannica and Wikipedia. His case was built on ASSUMPTION rather than fact. He assumes Justin didn't mention Paul because he thought Paul's letters were forgeries, and ASSUMES the same for Aristides. Did he give a quote where any of these two men ever claimed that Paul's letters were forged? NO! These men would not have used Paul's letters extensively had they not believed them to be genuine. Neither did Pro show any evidence that the earliest manuscripts of 1st and 2nd Corinthians (for example) did not include Paul's name as the author in the first verse. He doesn't explain why there is no debate among the church fathers about who Paul was, nor how the Marcionites could plausibly convince the Church across the board to accept letters they forged, and believe in the existence of this apostle whom they made up, which was absent from their church history all along. Skeptics like my opponent usually can't explain how these difficulties are overcome, yet, as far back in history we go the church has always accepted Paul's letters as being from him, and being authentic. In fact, had they been written by Marcion or his followers, there would be speculation about who had written them when they were first introduced to the church, or at least a tradition that Marionites authored them. No such tale has been told until the 19th century. So why didn't anybody through the centuries question who wrote them till now? How did these letters gain unanimous acceptance as works of the Apostle Paul? Had they been written anonymously, competing names would have popped up for authorship until a name was settled, but from the beginning it was accepted that Paul was the author. Pro can't tell us why there is no record of the church resisting or even investigating Marcion's claim, which is odd, because he would have need to explain how such works happened to be in his possession when the church didn't have them for over 100 years, how they came to be lost or unknown until this point, and how comes nobody for over 100 years had known of an Apostle Paul who (from the testimony of these letters and Acts) played a more prominent role in the first century church than any of the 12 apostles. He wrote more books, did more missionary work, established more churches, performed more miracles, and was well known as THE persecutor of the church before his conversion. This is not an easy history to hide, and to just make it up and have it gain universal acceptance by the church from the hand of their enemies (heretics practicing Marcionism which denies central teachings of the church such as the love of the OT God and the truth of the OT), is just too hard to believe. All ancient writers who reference 1 Clement have always ascribed it to Clement of Philippians 4:3, who was a travelling companion of Paul,and according to the early episcopal lists, the third or fourth bishop of Rome during the last decades of the first century. From the amount of pseudepigraphic literature attributed to him it is probable that he was a famous man in his own time, for why else would people want to name him as author of their works if he was a nobody? Tradition has naturally identified him with the Clement who is mentioned in Philippians iv.3. It appears from chapter 5 to be later than the persecution in the time of Nero, and from chapters 42-44 it is clear that the age of the apostles is regarded as past. It can therefore scarcely be older than 75-80 A.D. On the other hand chapter 44 speaks of presbyters who were APPOINTED BY THE APOSTLES and were STILL ALIVE, and there is no trace of any of the controversies or persecutions of the second century. It is therefore probably not much later than 100 A.D. If it be assumed that chapter 1, which speaks of trouble and perhaps of persecution, refers to the time of Domitian, it can probably be dated as c. 96 A.D. Most scholars therefore date it within the last decade of the first century C.E. This Epistle was held in very great esteem by the early Church. The account given of it by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., iii. 16) is as follows: "There is one acknowledged Epistle of this Clement (whom he has just identified with the friend of St. Paul), great and admirable, which he wrote in the name of the Church of Rome to the Church at Corinth, sedition having then arisen in the latter Church. We are aware that this Epistle has been publicly read in very many churches both in old times, and also in our own day." The Epistle before us thus appears to have been read in numerous churches, as being almost on a level with the canonical writings. The doctrine, style, and manner of thought are all in accordance with that, so we may with great probability conclude that we have in this Epistle a composition of that Clement who was Paul's companion. Pro's proof that 1 Clement was a 2nd century document? "1)Conflict between the priests and the common people Chapter 40 verse 5" Here is what chap 40:5 actually says: 40:5 For to the High Priest were assigned special services, and to the priests a special place hath been appointed; and on the Levites special duties are imposed. But he that is a layman is bound by the ordinances of laymen.https://en.wikisource.org...(Hoole_translation) Nothing here about conflict between priests and people. "2) Some parts appear to be anti-Gnosticism Chapter 20 verse 11" 20:11 All these things the great Maker and Master of all things hath appointed to be in peace and harmony, doing good unto all things, but more especially unto us, who have fled for refuge to his mercies, through our Lord Jesus Christ, How is this anti-Gnosticism? No reference to Gnosticism here at all, except in Pro's imagination. Detering was just biased, and didn't expect us to actually check. I wonder if Pro even read 1 Clement. Pro wants to know how the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas became evidence. They are examples showing the UNANIMOUS agreement through history on who wrote 1 Corinthians. Why don't we have any tradition that traces it back to Marcion? Pro believes Marionites were so clever they could pull off this hoax without a single person doubting until the 19th century? Pro read Iraeneus out of context to make it seem like he claimed Jesus was 50 years old. I invite every to see what Iraneus said in context. http://www.philvaz.com... Pro claims "Mark, Matthew, and many other early documents were anonymous," but all the manuscripts we have of Matthew, Mark, etc, have the same names on the title page. Pro would need to provide at least one single manuscript dated earlier than the ones we do have, which does not contain the authors name on it, to show the originals were written anonymously. No such document has ever been found. This is Pro's speculation again. As I'm running out of space, let me just say the Pro keeps making reference to a consensus that Marcion rediscovered the epistles, but gives no link to this alleged consensus that we may see if its so. Marcionism rejected the OT and its God as an evil God unworthy of our worship, whom Jesus came to defeat. Please read what the epistles say about the OT and its God, and ask yourself if Marcion could have written this: Rom 1:2 the only "HOLY Scriptures" could be the OT since the NT wasn't written yet; "oracles of God" which he quotes (Rom 3:2, 10-22 quotes Ps 14:3-4); Rom 4:3 Abraham believed God and was righteous; 1 Cor 9:8-10 the law of Moses was written for OUR sake; Rom 1:17 quotes Hab 2:4; Rom 9:17 same God as Exo 9:16 - Paul claims the OT God; Rom 10:13 same God as Joel 2:32; Eph 5:31 and Gen 2:24. Would Marcion have written this? Please vote.