Paul

Paul, known in his earlier life as Saul, was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a Hellenistic city whose inhabitants possessed Roman citizenship, which he inherited. According to the Acts of the Apostles he was brought up in Jerusalem and trained as a Pharisee under Gamaliel. In his own letters he describes himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews, zealous for the ancestral law, and, in that zeal, a persecutor of the church. He was present at the stoning of Stephen and obtained authority to arrest followers of Jesus as far as Damascus. Precise years of birth and death are not recorded in contemporary sources; historians place his activity in the first century, with his conversion generally assigned to the thirties of that century.

The decisive event of his life was an encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, which he treats as the origin of his apostleship to the Gentiles. After a period that included time in Arabia and a return to Damascus, he went up to Jerusalem, where he met Cephas (Peter) and James, and later worked at Antioch in Syria. From Antioch he was sent on missionary journeys through Cyprus, southern Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, founding communities at Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and elsewhere. He insisted that Gentile believers were not bound to circumcision and the ceremonial precepts of the Mosaic law, a position that provoked controversy and was addressed at a gathering of apostles and elders in Jerusalem. Companions named in Acts and the letters include Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Titus, and Luke.

A substantial body of letters circulated under his name forms a large part of the New Testament. The letters most widely accepted by modern scholarship as authentic—Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon—were written in the mid-first century and remain the primary sources for his thought. In them he develops teaching on justification by faith apart from works of the law, the incorporation of Jew and Gentile into one body in Christ, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the hoped-for return of the Lord. Other canonical letters (among them Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles) belong to the Pauline tradition, though their direct authorship is debated. These writings have been foundational for later Christian theology in East and West.

According to Acts, Paul was arrested in Jerusalem after a disturbance in the Temple, detained at Caesarea, and, as a Roman citizen, appealed to the emperor. He was taken to Rome, where the canonical narrative leaves him under house arrest, preaching. First Clement, writing from Rome near the end of the first century, already refers to his martyrdom. Later ecclesiastical writers, including Eusebius and Jerome, report that he was beheaded at Rome during the Neronian persecution in the mid-sixties of the first century and buried along the Ostian Way. The Constantinian basilica now called Saint Paul Outside the Walls stands over the traditional tomb. He is not counted among the Twelve Apostles but is venerated throughout the churches as Apostle to the Gentiles. In the Latin calendar his principal feast, shared with Saint Peter, is 29 June; the Conversion of Saint Paul is kept on 25 January.