Apostle Paul

Saul of Tarsus, later known as the Apostle Paul, was a first-century Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a Hellenistic city of the eastern Mediterranean within the Roman Empire. According to the Acts of the Apostles he was a Roman citizen by birth and a Pharisee, trained in Jerusalem under Gamaliel. His own letters confirm that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, and zealous for the ancestral traditions. Before his conversion he persecuted the early Jesus movement; Acts depicts him as present at the stoning of Stephen and as seeking authority to arrest followers of Jesus in Damascus. No ancient source records a precise year of birth, and modern estimates remain conjectural.

The decisive change in his life is described in Acts as a visionary encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, after which he was baptized and began to proclaim Jesus as Messiah. Paul himself speaks of a revelation of God’s Son, after which he did not immediately consult the Jerusalem apostles but went into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. After some years he visited Jerusalem and then worked in Syria and Cilicia. At Antioch he became associated with a mixed Jewish and Gentile community and, with Barnabas, undertook missionary journeys through Cyprus and Asia Minor. Over subsequent decades he traveled in Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece, founding and corresponding with churches in cities such as Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Ephesus. His surviving letters, written in Greek in the mid-first century, are among the earliest Christian documents and develop a theology of justification, the inclusion of the Gentiles, the cross and resurrection, and life in the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians he presents himself as unmarried and commends remaining as he is.

Paul’s relations with the Jerusalem church were at times strained, especially over whether Gentile converts must observe the Jewish law. The meeting described in Acts 15 and reflected in Galatians 2 addressed that conflict. In Galatians he insists that he received his gospel by revelation and that the leading apostles recognized his mission to the uncircumcised. He supported himself at least in part by tentmaking and organized a collection from Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem. After bringing that collection to Jerusalem he was arrested in the Temple precincts, according to Acts, detained for years in Caesarea, and, as a Roman citizen, appealed to the emperor and was sent to Rome. Acts closes with Paul under house arrest in Rome, preaching for two years.

Later Christian tradition, already attested near the end of the first century by 1 Clement, holds that Paul died a martyr in Rome, commonly associated with the Neronian persecution of the 60s. Tradition locates his beheading on the Ostian Way and his burial at the site of the present Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. He was never Bishop of Rome and held no patriarchal see; his authority rests on his apostleship and writings. Western and Eastern churches commemorate him principally on 29 June together with the Apostle Peter, and the Conversion of Saint Paul on 25 January. He is invoked as patron of missionaries, theologians, and evangelists, and of places linked to his life and cult, including Malta, where Acts recounts a shipwreck. His letters have remained central to Christian doctrine, liturgy, and controversy from late antiquity through the Reformation to the present.