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the apostle Paul never met Jesus prior to Jesus' death, but he said he did encounter the resurrected Christ and later consulted with some of the eyewitnesses to make sure he was preaching the same message they were, because he began writing his New Testament letters years before the gospels were written down, they contain extremely early reports concerning Jesus - so early that nobody can make a credible claim that they had been seriously distorted by legendary development, Luke Timothy Johnson, the scholar from Emory University, contends that Paul's letters represent "valuable external verification" of the "antiquity and ubiquity" of the traditions about Jesus, there's no question that Paul's writings are the earliest in the New Testament, and that they do make some very significant references to the life of Jesus, he refers to the fact that Jesus was a descendant of David, that he was the Messiah, that he was betrayed, that he was tried, crucified for our sins, and buried, and that he rose again on the 3rd day and was seen by many people - including James, the brother of Jesus who hadn't believed in him prior to his crucifixion, it's also interesting that Paul doesn't mention some of the things that are highly significant in the gospels - for instance, Jesus' parables and miracles - but he focuses on Jesus' atoning death and resurrection, those, for Paul, were the most important things about Jesus - and indeed they transformed Paul from being a persecutor of Christians into becoming history's foremost Christian missionary, who was willing to go through all sorts of hardships and deprivation because of his faith, Paul also corroborates some important aspects of the character of Jesus - his humility, his obedience, his love for sinners, and so forth, he calls Christians to have the mind of Christ in the second chapter of Philippians, this is a famous passage in which Paul is probably quoting from an early Christian hymn about the emptying of Christ, who was equal to God, yet took the form of a man, of a slave, and suffered the extreme penalty, the Crucifixion, so Paul's letters are an important witness to the deity of Christ - he calls Jesus "the Son of God" and the "image of God", the fact that Paul came from a monotheistic Jewish background, worshiped Jesus as God is extremely significant and it undermines a popular theory that the deity of Christ was later imported into Christianity by Gentile beliefs, it's just not so, even Paul at this very early date was worshiping Jesus as God, all this corroboration by Paul is of the utmost importance and we have other early letters by the eyewitnesses James and Peter too