Paul

Paul, known in Jewish circles as Saul, was a first-century Jew born in Tarsus in Cilicia and a Roman citizen by birth. Of the tribe of Benjamin and trained as a Pharisee, he studied in Jerusalem under the noted teacher Gamaliel. In his early adulthood he was a zealous opponent of the nascent Christian movement, participating in the persecution of believers and being present at the stoning of Stephen in Jerusalem. His own letters and the Acts of the Apostles present him as initially convinced that the followers of Jesus were a dangerous deviation from ancestral Jewish faith and practice.

According to Acts, while traveling to Damascus to arrest Christians he experienced a vision of the risen Jesus that transformed his life. Blinded for a time and then baptized, he began to proclaim that Jesus was the Messiah. After a period that included time in Arabia and a return to Damascus, he eventually went to Jerusalem and later settled for a time in Antioch in Syria, from which he was sent on missionary journeys. Over subsequent years he traveled widely through Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, founding and nurturing communities of believers composed largely of Gentiles as well as Jews. He supported himself in part by the trade of tentmaking and repeatedly returned to strengthen the churches he had established.

Paul’s surviving letters—among them Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, with other New Testament epistles traditionally attributed to him—became foundational documents of Christian theology. He argued that Gentiles could belong to the people of God through faith in Christ without taking on the full yoke of the Mosaic law, and he developed themes of justification, the church as the body of Christ, and life in the Spirit. His activity generated controversy both with some Jewish authorities and with other Christians who insisted on circumcision and Torah observance for Gentile converts; the gathering in Jerusalem described in Acts and reflected in Galatians addressed these disputes in the mid-first century.

Arrested in Jerusalem after a riot in the Temple precincts, Paul spent years in custody in Caesarea before appealing, as a Roman citizen, to the emperor. He was taken to Rome, where Acts leaves him under house arrest, preaching freely. Early Christian tradition, already attested by the late first or early second century in 1 Clement, holds that he was martyred in Rome during the reign of Nero, beheaded as befitting a citizen, and buried outside the city on the road to Ostia. A basilica later known as Saint Paul Outside the Walls rose over the traditional tomb. Venerated from antiquity as the Apostle to the Gentiles, he is commemorated with the Apostle Peter on 29 June, and his conversion is observed on 25 January in Western calendars.