The charge is old, serious, and was once defended by first-rate scholars. It collapsed for a reason, and the reason is chronology: Paul's letters are earlier than the Gospels, which makes him a witness to the earliest tradition rather than a late corrupter of it.

1. The thesis was abandoned on evidence. Ferdinand Christian Baur and the Tübingen School argued in the nineteenth century that Paul radically reshaped the faith and that Peter and Paul were at war. Baur was a serious historian, not a crank. But his reconstruction depended on late dates for Acts and the Gospels and on a rift the documents themselves do not support — Acts 15 and Galatians 2 both show the apostles reaching agreement. As the chronology moved earlier, the thesis lost its footing, and mainstream scholarship, including skeptical scholarship, moved on.

2. Paul is earlier than the Gospels, not later. Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are dated across the critical spectrum to roughly AD 48-62. The Gospels are generally dated AD 65-95. So Paul is not a second-generation innovator writing after the story had time to mutate; he is our closest written source to the events. If anything, the earliest documents should carry the most weight.

3. He says he received the message. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul writes, "I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day... and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve." "Delivered" and "received" are the technical vocabulary of handing on tradition — the same language rabbis used. He is quoting the church's existing creed, not composing one. Most scholars date that formula to within a few years of the crucifixion. He says the same about the whole message: "I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11-12).

4. The creed is falsifiable, and he invites the check. The list names Peter, the Twelve, James, and "more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive" (1 Corinthians 15:6). That is not how you write a legend. That is how you write something you expect people to verify, in a letter to a city where they could.

5. The Jerusalem apostles ratified him. In Galatians 2:1-10 Paul goes up to Jerusalem and lays his gospel before James, Peter, and John — the men who had eaten with Jesus. The result is that "they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship" (Galatians 2:9). If Paul had invented a different religion, this is the meeting where it would have been caught. Instead the Jerusalem leaders endorsed him, and Acts 15 records the same agreement over Gentiles.

6. His doctrine matches Jesus's own teaching. The core is not Paul's invention: Jesus said he came to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), taught that the humble tax collector went home justified while the religious man did not (Luke 18:9-14), claimed authority to forgive sins, and spoke of himself as the coming judge. Paul develops these — the church as a body, justification stated in courtroom terms, the gospel extended to Gentiles. Development is not invention, or every systematic theologian is a heretic.

7. Different genre, not different gospel. Jesus taught in parables and aphorisms to crowds in Galilee. Paul wrote occasional letters to specific churches with specific problems. Comparing them as if they should sound alike is a category mistake, like concluding that a doctor's lectures and his patient notes describe different medicine.

8. Turn: Paul did not invent the empty tomb. Paul did not invent the empty tomb or the resurrection appearances; he received them, and the tradition he received came from Jerusalem, from people who had been in the room. And he did not invent the crucifixion — a dying Messiah was the one thing no first-century Jew would have made up (1 Corinthians 1:23; Deuteronomy 21:23). So the objector has to explain why an invented religion kept the scandal at its center and why its earliest witness says he got it from someone else.

9. Why no letters from Jesus?. Jesus wrote nothing, and that is unremarkable for a first-century Jewish teacher — Socrates wrote nothing either, and we trust Plato. What Jesus did was train apostles and commission them to teach (Matthew 28:19-20), which is exactly the mechanism that produced the letters. Peter already treats Paul's letters as Scripture, lumping them in with "the other Scriptures" (2 Peter 3:15-16). And the question "why should I trust letters Jesus never wrote" assumes a standard of autograph-only authority that would disqualify most of what we know about the ancient world.

Paul is not a rival to Jesus; he is the earliest witness we have to what Jesus's followers were saying within a few years of the crucifixion, and he submitted that message to the men who knew Jesus in the flesh. If the resurrection happened, Paul is explained. If it did not, Paul is not the hardest problem you have — the empty tomb and the martyrs are.

Sources: Craig A. Evans; N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God; F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents; Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited; F.C. Baur (for the opposing view).