Apostle Paul

Saul of Tarsus, known after his conversion as Paul, was a first-century Jewish teacher and missionary whose letters form a substantial part of the Christian New Testament. He was born in Tarsus, a Hellenistic city in the Roman province of Cilicia in southeastern Asia Minor, into a Jewish family of the tribe of Benjamin and of Pharisaic tradition. He possessed Roman citizenship by birth, a status he later invoked in legal proceedings. According to the Acts of the Apostles he was brought up in Jerusalem and trained in the Law under the Pharisee Gamaliel. In his own letters he describes himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews and, as to the Law, a Pharisee, and he acknowledges that he had persecuted the church. Acts associates him with the stoning of Stephen and with subsequent efforts to arrest followers of Jesus, including a journey toward Damascus for that purpose.

While on the road to Damascus, according to Acts, he experienced a visionary encounter in which he believed the risen Jesus addressed him, an event he also treats in his letters as a revelation of the Son of God. He was baptized in Damascus by a disciple named Ananias. He spent time in Arabia and again in Damascus before going up to Jerusalem, where he met Cephas (Peter) and James the Lord's brother. He later worked in Syria and Cilicia and was brought by Barnabas to Antioch, which became a base for outreach to Gentiles. In the mid-first century he undertook extensive travels through Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, founding or strengthening communities in cities such as Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Ephesus. A dispute over whether Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law was addressed at a meeting in Jerusalem. Paul continued to argue, especially in Galatians and Romans, that justification is through faith in Christ rather than works of the Law.

His surviving correspondence addresses theology, ethics, church order, and his apostolic self-understanding. Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are the letters whose Pauline authorship is most widely accepted by modern scholars; the authorship of Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles is disputed. He earned a living at times as a tentmaker, working with Aquila and Priscilla at Corinth. Conflicts with opponents, imprisonments, floggings, and other hardships are mentioned both in Acts and in the letters. He organized a collection among the Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem. After returning to that city he was seized in the Temple, accused of bringing Gentiles into restricted courts, and held in custody at Caesarea under the governors Felix and Festus. As a Roman citizen he appealed to the emperor and was sent by sea to Italy, surviving a shipwreck on Malta before reaching Rome.

The narrative of Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome for two years, receiving visitors and preaching. Later Christian tradition, already reflected in the late first-century letter of Clement of Rome and subsequently in writers such as Tertullian, Eusebius, and Jerome, holds that he was executed in Rome during the reign of Nero, in the mid-60s of the first century. Because of his citizenship he is said to have been beheaded rather than crucified, at a site associated with the Aquae Salviae (Tre Fontane) on the Ostian Way. A memorial on the Via Ostiensis became the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, where a sarcophagus traditionally identified as his tomb has been venerated and examined by modern archaeology. Precise years of birth and death are not recorded in contemporary documents and remain a matter of scholarly estimate.

Paul is commemorated as the Apostle to the Gentiles and, together with Peter, as a principal figure in the apostolic tradition of the church of Rome. The Western and Eastern churches keep his principal feast with Peter on 29 June; the Conversion of Saint Paul is observed on 25 January. He is invoked as patron of missionaries, theologians, tentmakers, and of places associated with his life, including Malta and Rome. His historical portrait depends on the New Testament texts and on later ecclesiastical writers, which must be read with attention to their genre, purpose, and the limits of the evidence.