Apostle Paul

Paul the Apostle, known in his earlier life as Saul of Tarsus, was a first-century Jewish teacher and missionary whose letters and journeys were decisive in shaping early Christianity. He was born in Tarsus, a Hellenistic city in the Roman province of Cilicia, and possessed Roman citizenship by birth. A Jew of the tribe of Benjamin and a Pharisee, he was, according to the Acts of the Apostles, trained in Jerusalem under Gamaliel. In his zeal for the ancestral traditions he persecuted the followers of Jesus, taking part in the events surrounding the death of Stephen and seeking to arrest believers in Damascus. On the way to that city he experienced a vision of the risen Christ that reversed the course of his life. After a period in Arabia and a return to Damascus and Jerusalem, he began to preach that Jesus was the Messiah, first among Jews and then, with increasing emphasis, among Gentiles.

In the middle decades of the first century Paul undertook extensive missionary journeys through Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, founding or strengthening communities in Antioch of Pisidia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and other cities. He supported himself by the trade of tentmaking and argued, against some Jewish Christian teachers, that Gentile converts were not bound to circumcision and the full observance of the Mosaic Law. That conviction was confirmed, according to Acts and Galatians, at a meeting in Jerusalem with the leading apostles. A substantial body of letters written in his name survives in the New Testament. Scholars generally accept as authentic Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon; other letters in the Pauline corpus are more widely regarded as later compositions in his tradition. These writings treat the death and resurrection of Christ, justification by faith, the church as one body, and practical questions of community life, and they have remained central to Christian theology.

Paul was arrested in Jerusalem after a riot in the Temple precincts, held for two years at Caesarea, and, having appealed to the emperor as a Roman citizen, was sent to Rome. The narrative of Acts closes with him under house arrest in the capital, receiving visitors and teaching. Subsequent Christian tradition, already reflected in the letter of Clement of Rome near the end of the first century, holds that he was executed in Rome during the Neronian persecution, by beheading, the form of death reserved for citizens. He is said to have been buried along the Via Ostiensis, on the site later occupied by the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Together with the Apostle Peter he is honored on 29 June; the Western church also commemorates his conversion on 25 January.

From the earliest centuries Paul has been venerated as a saint and as the Apostle to the Gentiles. He was never the object of a medieval or modern process of canonization, since his cult is apostolic in origin. He is invoked as a patron of missionaries, theologians, tentmakers, and of the city of Rome and the island of Malta, among other places and causes. His interpretation of the gospel in relation to Israel and the nations has been a principal source for Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant doctrine, and his letters continue to be read as Scripture throughout the Christian world.