Sorry, but Paul, writing his letters some 25-30 years after the death of Jesus and having never even met the man himself, doesn't inspire me with confidence.
You don't know whether Paul ever met Jesus or not. Paul did, in fact, collect the cloaks of those that stoned Stephen so he was certainly a contemporary of Jesus. They may have never spoken (so I guess that means they didn't "meet"), but Paul very well may have seen Jesus at some point, unless he was only newly arrived from Tarsus when Stephen died.
Further, Paul (I know, the unverifiable claims of one man) claimed to have spent time with Jesus. He claims to have had a near-death experience... so much so that the people standing around his body were amazed when Paul stood up and walked away. He claims to have seen the heavenly place. He, along with several other of the apostles, claim to have seen miraculous things happen at their request. But you deny them all.
Paul never made millions from his evangelical journeys, he was a tentmaker. A very small man in a very small corner of the world. Why would there be historical annals written about him? To the victor goes the spoils - the victor was the Roman empire, and until they bastardized the Christian faith in the 4th century and following, the Romans did everything they could to put down the troublemakers. That typically includes writing them out of history as well, does it not?
