While I would like to believe that they meant the earliest copies, I think the wording is more insidious, to deliberately mislead the uninformed that there was something before Paul's writings that render his false.
“While I would like to believe that they meant the earliest copies, I think the wording is more insidious, to deliberately mislead the uninformed that there was something before Paul’s writings that render his false.”
Perhaps. But wouldn’t it be great to have actual writings from just after the resurrection?