to Secret Alias,
Clearly Irenaeus could only be writing about something which already existed. I don't understand your difficulty with the idea that the heretics preceded Irenaeus ... unless of course it challenges some of your inherited assumptions about the reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
So some "heretics" preceded Irenaeus. So what? That still does not mean these heretics were right on what you would accept from them as real, through Irenaeus' writings.
No. If Paul wrote a gospel it wasn't 'in the genre' of other pre-existent gospels. As the Marcionites argued it was the ur-gospel.
So in what genre would be this ur-gospel? Would it look like gMarcion, which looks itself like gLuke, which look itself like the other synoptics?
Where did the Marcionites argued Paul's gospel was the written ur-gospel?
I feel more comfortable with a tradition such as the Marcionites who preserve an understanding of Paul which is more in keeping with what makes sense (i.e. a visionary lunatic).
Where did you get that the Marcionites thought of Paul as a visionary lunatic?
No I am not. Let me try to explain it to you another way. Take all the things we assume about Paul based on (a) the Pauline Epistles as we have them (b) Acts of the Apostles and (c) the things that Church Fathers pass on about Paul which they say is the truth about Paul. Put them all in a mental 'box.' This represents the Catholic understanding of Paul.
I do not see anything wrong about studying Paul through his epistles. Acts might be 80% fiction, and depicts Paul more Jewish than he was, and in good relation with the Church of Jerusalem (which is wrong, more so after the clash in Antioch), but in some strictly non religious items, can complement the information extracted from the Pauline epistles. But I have no confidence on what the later Fathers and heretics said about Paul. They tried to use Paul for their own bias, agenda and theories.
Now move your 'mental eye' over to another box. This contains all the things that (a) the Church Fathers said the heretics lie about Paul or misrepresent Paul and (b) all the textual variants in the collection of Pauline writings that the Church Fathers say are in the hands of the same heretics. This represents an entirely different tradition about Paul or at least 'another tradition' about the apostle.
Now we can use 'the Pauline writings' to help us make more sense of what the heretics believed about Paul. But we have to find a way to connect these passages which may or may not have been in the other collections of Paul's writings by connecting them to things said about the heretics in the writings of the Church Fathers. But the important point I am making is that all what you assume to be true about Paul likely comes from one of two or three or possibly many boxes containing traditions about Paul
Lot of very ill-evidenced assumptions and a rather convoluted theory. You are walking on very thin ice here.
Cordially, Bernard