Paul was not an eyewitness, he never met Jesus.
That is what you choose to believe.
I choose to believe otherwise. Paul was a fire breathing Jewish Pharisee who hated Christians with a passion, thinking he was doing God's work. He was one of the upcoming men in Judaism. Then he met Jesus. Many come to know Jesus through the Bible or by being convinced of the truth by friends or a pastor, or directly by the Holy Spirit. Paul met Him head on, getting knocked down in the dirt and slapped up side the head. Jesus knew what Paul was capable of and hand picked him to be the leading missionary of all time. Jesus also said that he would teach Paul what he would suffer for doing His work. And Paul did suffer. He was beaten and imprisoned. He was chased out of cities and came close to being murdered a number of times. In the end he was murdered by Nero.
It's still not what I choose to believe. It's the multiple lines of evidence that supports the existence of Socrates. He is not only written about by Plato, his student, but others who have no skin in the game, no vested interest, Socrates is not their Messiah, not someone they worship like a Prophet or God, just a philosopher who taught in the Agora.
Which doesn't mean that Plato did not embellish the story or that everything that is written about Socrates is a hundred percent accurate, just that it's highly likely that there was a Socrates, a Philosopher who taught in the Athenian Agora;
''Let us start with
the evidence in works written in Socrates’ own lifetime. This has an advantage in that these works are most likely to be first-hand accounts, written from a fresh memory and for an audience familiar with Socrates himself and before any tradition could have arisen of the “Socratic discourse” as a literary genre that could take liberties with history. . . .
The most important single source is the satire by Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds, produced in 423 and followed by a second edition some years later where the poet tells us (II. 518 If.) that the first edition was not successful and where certain features, notably the debate of the Just and Unjust Arguments and the final burning of Socrates’ school, were either added or radically revised.
How far can a comedian go? Whether Aristophanes’ real target was Socrates himself, the subversive tendencies of the Sophistic movement, the apparent absurdities of Ionian “science,” or just ‘long-haired intellectuals” in general (and the contrasts we find so obvious between these various elements may not have been at all so obvious to their contemporaries), his selection of Socrates as his chief butt must surely mean that Socrates was known to a fairly wide audience, and vaguely associated with the “modem” tendencies.''
Plato and Xenophon have much in common. They both knew Socrates personally (Xenophon [Mem. III 6.1] mentions Plato en passant in a way suggesting considerable intimacy with Socrates.) . . . . .
Plato himself, as we have seen, is naturally regarded as our main source for Socrates, though only in his earliest dialogues. This does not, however, mean that nothing in the later dialogues can be used. The change in Socrates’ role in the dialogues is a gradual one and the fact that he is sometimes abandoned shows that Plato thought of himself as in some sense following Socrates for the rest of the time. . . .
Finally we come to Aristotle, our only substantial later source. Barring pure invention, whatever Aristotle tells us about Socrates must come from further sources, and his value to us depends on what these sources were, and on how reliably, and so with what purpose, he used them. If he had only the sources that we also have ourselves his value would be only that of a highly intelligent modern colleague; his opinion would be just one among others. But this does not follow if it turns out simply that everything he tells us can be traced to some otherwise available source. Such a conclusion might be disappointing but it would still be valuable for us if Aristotle chose his material from sources far exceeding those available to us now. It would show which sources he thought reliable on the point in question, and would suggest that the lost ones were either not among these or did not contradict those we have. That his sources did vastly exceed our own no one would doubt, and though it is only natural that he should make much use of Plato’s writings, there are many things he tells us-such as that Plato, not Socrates, “separated” the Forms, or that Plato’s earliest teacher was Cratylus which it is hard to see how he can have got from the dialogues.
There is other evidence discussed by Lacey but it is less direct than the points I have copied above. So we have the testimony of contemporaries, each presenting his own perspective, two students, one satirist ridiculing the great man.''
