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

My sincere apologies for giving rebuttals in round 2. I was so excited but also pressed for time that I truly forgot to save it for the next round. Continuing my response to Pro"s opening argument though, he argued that the Marcionites made the epistles themselves and attributed them to Paul, but putting Paul"s name on them is pointless unless people already know who he is. Let me ask Pro these questions: when 1st and 2nd Corinthians were first written, to whom did these letters go? Because these letters are addressed to the church in Corinth. (1 Cor 1:2) If Paul was not a real person who visited this church, how were the Corinthians to understand 1 Cor 1:10-16 where Paul tells them that he heard some of them were saying "I follow Paul," and where he names people in Corinth whom he baptized? "When I came to you, brothers"" (1 Cor 2:1) "When I arrive"I will come to you"" (1 Cor 16:3, 5) Which is more probable? That this is a person who existed, and wrote to the church which he visited? Or, that somebody many decades after the church was already established invented the idea that some guy they didn"t know of named Paul used to play a pivotal role in their church history, and get them to agree? Most Christians would have rejected it for the same reason they rejected the apocryphal gospels. Marcionism was heavily rejected by the early church of the 2nd century, so why would they trust a gospel produced by them anyway? And why forge letters in Paul"s name unless people recognized his authority? And what proof did Pro give that there was a legend of a fictional Paul before his letters were written? None. As for the Marcionites inventing Paul"s letters, Marcion himself quoted from them, showing these letters existed before him and his movement: "These seven letters are quoted or mentioned by the earliest of sources, and are included in every ancient canon, including that of Marcion (c.140).[13] There is no record of scholarly doubt concerning authorship until the 19th century when, around 1840, German scholar Ferdinand Christian Baur accepted only four of the letters bearing Paul's name as genuine, which he called the Hauptebriefe (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians). Hilgenfeld (1875) and H. J. Holtzmann (1885) instead accepted the seven letters listed above, adding Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, and Philippians. Few scholars have argued against this list of seven epistles, which all share common themes, emphasis, vocabulary and style. They also exhibit a uniformity of doctrine concerning the Mosaic Law, Christ, and faith." http://en.wikipedia.org... Proof that Marcion didn"t write Paul"s letters is because Paul"s letters refute Marionism. "Marcion, we may conclude, was important for two reasons. He rejected the Old Testament as the document of an alien religion; and he taught that Jesus had come to save humankind from the control of the evil Creator to whom the Old Testament witnesses. These are precisely the two aspects of his work on which patristic condemnations, from Tertullian onwards, focus. In the process he denied the validity of allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, which he saw as a means of accommodating it to Christian belief; this too is picked up by Tertullian. In short, Marcion was not a major influence on the formation of the New Testament; he was simply a Marcionite." (Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders, Editors: The Canon Debate; John Barton, Marcion Revisited, p 354, 2002) The letters of Paul fully accept the OT and its God as the truth. (1 Cor 9:7-11) 1 Clement "Certain ideas that are presupposed in 1 Clement were not prevalent in the first century," but not prevalent doesn"t mean they didn"t exist and would not be mentioned. Conflict between the priests and the common people. It happens today, it used to happen back then. Human nature doesn"t change. People don"t always agree with their spiritual leaders. Some parts appear to be anti-Gnosticism. The doctrines that came together to form Gnosticism were already floating around in Greek philosophy and other sources that affected the first-century church. Also, other groups besides Gnostics rejected the resurrection. It depicts Paul and Peter as being side by side peacefully. So what? It talks about persecution but not a specific event (making it so it must have been more commonplace/unexpected). This letter "is at the end of the reign of Domitian, or c. AD 96, by taking the phrase "sudden and repeated misfortunes and hindrances which have befallen us" (1:1) for a reference to persecutions under Domitian." http://en.wikipedia.org... Christians were also persecuted by Jews in the first century CE. "How could the ancient, firmly settled community oppose its Presbyters just because of a few ringleaders?" It only takes one convincing voice to start a riot, or even a war, especially when the powers that be are clearly (or perceived to be) in the wrong. Martin Luther"s role in starting the Protestant Reformation is a good example. " it is Martin Luther who is widely acknowledged to have started the Reformation with his 1517 work The Ninety-Five Theses." http://en.wikipedia.org... Ignatian Corpus Pro thinks someone wrote in Ignatius" name after he died, which he says was common place, so why does he not think someone wrote in Paul"s name after he died? Why write in the name of someone who doesn"t exist? Revelations So Revelation doesn"t mention Paul by name, well, neither does it mention the other apostles by name, so they didn"t exist? It doesn"t mention Mary by name, or for that matter, many martyrs of John"s time. So they didn"t exist? Rev 1:1 shows this is a book about prophecy, so why would John break the prophetic to mention Paul"s death? And Pro seems to assume there is no God who could have given John this revelation, otherwise, he"d have to know John can only write what God tells him to. Rev 1:17-18 says the First and the Last (Jewish term for God [Isa 44:6]) became dead, and returned. Is that Jewish? It"s as Christian as you can get. Pro accused me of using biased sources, but Detering is very biased. Detering argues that Paul isn"t mentioned in Greco-Roman or Jewish literature such as Plutarch. But Plutarch also did not mention Gamaliel, or Hanina ben Dosa; were they also mythological? Plutarch did not name all the missionaries of the Mithras cult, so they didn"t exist? On page 109 of his book, The Falsified Paul, he claims 10-20 years isn"t enough time for the church to develop hymns and creeds of Jesus for Paul to quote, and yet we have the Mormon (LDS) Church with creeds, hymns and poems in 1836, just 6 years after Joseph Smith officially founded the church and 16 years after his alleged vision of God. So Justin Martyr doesn"t mention Paul, why then doesn"t he mention the name of the real author? Or just inform us that it was anonymous as was done with the letter from James? And if Justin thought it was a forgery, why would he be deriving his ideas from it? Interestingly, not one of the sources which quote from the letters of Paul ever attributes them to another author. So my question to Pro is, how is it that we have not a single tradition of Maricion or anyone else being labeled as the author of these letters if indeed Paul didn't write them? Pro says on the Britannica, "Someone can agree with one section of something while disagreeing with another section of it," but doesn't see one can agree to Paul's existence from Ignatius' writings while not agreeing with some elements in his accounts? Errors in his accounts somehow discredits the historicity of Paul, even though the alleged errors have nothing to do with Paul specifically. Pro never provided any MAJOR contradictions between Acts and Paul's letters. I would like at least one quote from Acts and one from Paul to back up his claim. So far all we have is his claim, no proof. If there does not exist reliable sources to establish if someone existed then it lessens the chances that they existed, which is why Pro needs to give examples to show that Acts and Paul's letters are not reliable. He has not done so. He claims contradictions exist but gives no examples to prove it. He claims they are unhistorical but give no example of events in history to back this. To explain why Acts doesn't mention the destruction of the Temple, Pro say "Acts was written in the form of a biography of Paul (not of Jesus)," but this doesn't explain how Acts presents the Temple as still standing and being in use (Acts 2:46; 5:42) Why would Luke present a standing temple in letters to Theopholis knowing the Temple was in ruins? He also says "the arguments on the website do not even agree with the modern consensus (which dates Acts to either the 80's or 90's)," but his own arguments, and Detering whom he quotes, don't agree with the consensus of modern scholarship that Paul existed. So much for consensus. Even 80-90 CE is good enough to establish historicity. Referencing the Olivet discourse only shows Luke was using a common source, or that the same discourse was floating around. Pro simply assumes Jesus couldn't have prophesied Jerusalem's fall before 70 CE, but that assumes God doesn't exist and gives revelation, with is outside the scope of this debate. Pro doesn't give any proof that Luke uses Josephus as a source, and there's a whole list of people not mentioned in ancient works even though they existed. So his argument from silence fails. Acts 25:8 and 28:17 merely say Paul didn't break the law of the Jews, and he does speak positively of the law in Rom 7:12 and other places. He does have issues with the law in Acts 15:1-2; 13:39; 18:13. So Paul's view of the law is the same in both Acts and the Epistles. I'm running out of space, but will finish my rebuttals next round.