Apostle Paul

Paul the Apostle, known before his conversion as Saul, was a first-century Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia and a figure of central importance in the spread of the early Jesus movement among Gentiles. He identified himself as a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, and a Pharisee with respect to the law. He also possessed Roman citizenship, which he later used in legal proceedings. The Acts of the Apostles, a later narrative source, places his education in Jerusalem under Gamaliel and depicts him as a zealous persecutor of the followers of Jesus, present at the killing of Stephen and authorized to arrest believers in Damascus. Paul’s own letters confirm that he had persecuted the church and that he later regarded this as a matter of shame and of unmerited grace.

Paul attributes his change of life to a revelation of Jesus Christ, which he describes as an encounter with the risen Lord that made him an apostle. Acts dramatizes this as a vision on the road to Damascus, followed by baptism and an initial period of preaching. In Galatians he states that after the revelation he did not immediately consult with others but went into Arabia, returned to Damascus, and only after three years went up to Jerusalem to meet Cephas (Peter) and James. He then worked in the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Over subsequent years he traveled widely through Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, often supporting himself by tentmaking. With colleagues including Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Titus, and Prisca and Aquila, he established or visited assemblies in Antioch, Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and elsewhere. Conflict over whether Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the Jewish law led to a meeting in Jerusalem with the leading apostles and to Paul’s sustained argument that Gentiles are included in God’s people through faith in Christ without becoming proselytes to Judaism.

A collection of letters in his name entered the New Testament. The letters that critical scholarship most securely ascribes to Paul himself are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Other letters (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles) are of disputed or widely denied Pauline authorship and may represent later Pauline schools. In the undisputed letters Paul treats the death and resurrection of Jesus as the turning point of the ages, speaks of justification and life in the Spirit, addresses factionalism, sexual ethics, and the collection for Jerusalem, and interprets Israel’s scriptures in light of Christ. He expected an imminent return of the Lord, though he also had to counsel communities when some believers died beforehand. These texts became a primary source for later Christian doctrine, especially in the Latin West through Augustine and the Reformation, and they remain central in Eastern Christian tradition as well.

Paul’s last years are known only in outline. He brought a collection to Jerusalem, where he was arrested after a disturbance in the Temple. After imprisonment at Caesarea and hearings before Roman governors, he appealed to Caesar and was sent to Rome. Acts concludes with him under house arrest in the capital, receiving visitors and teaching. First Clement, writing from Rome near the end of the first century, refers to Paul’s struggles and to his testimony before rulers, and later Christian tradition uniformly holds that he was executed in Rome under Nero, in the 60s of the first century. As a citizen he is said to have been beheaded rather than crucified, at a site on the Via Ostiensis. Constantine built a basilica over the venerated tomb; the present Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls stands on that site, and a sarcophagus associated with the apostle has been investigated in modern times.

Paul was not bishop of Rome, nor did he hold the office of patriarch. His authority was that of an apostle who claimed a commission from the risen Christ to the Gentiles. In 1 Corinthians he presents himself as unmarried and commends that state. The church has commemorated him from antiquity, especially on 29 June together with the Apostle Peter, and on 25 January in memory of his conversion. He is invoked as patron of missionaries, theologians, evangelists, tentmakers and related crafts, of the island of Malta (where Acts recounts a shipwreck), and, with Peter, of the city of Rome. His letters and the communities he founded made him, after Jesus and alongside the Jerusalem apostles, one of the most influential figures in the formation of Christianity.