Who was Paul the Apostle?

A Jew of Tarsus

Paul was born in Tarsus, in Cilicia, near today’s Mersin in southern Turkey. He was proud of it, “a citizen of no insignificant city” (Acts 21:39), and he was a Roman citizen from birth, a privilege that would save his skin more than once (Acts 22:28). He studied the law in Jerusalem “at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3), the most honored teacher of his day, and earned his living making tents (Acts 18:3). Like many Jews who lived abroad, he had two names, as Why did Saul change his name to Paul? explains.

Was Paul Jewish? Entirely, and he never stopped saying so.

circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee

From persecutor to apostle

He first appears holding the coats of the men who stoned Stephen (Acts 7:58). Then he goes house to house, dragging believers to prison, and sets out for Damascus with letters from the high priest. Near the city a light throws him to the ground and a voice asks why he is persecuting him. The full scene, and why Acts tells it three different ways, is in What happened to Paul on the road to Damascus? He never forgot where he started.

For I am the least of the apostles, who is not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the assembly of God.

Twenty years on the road

Acts follows him on three long journeys and one last voyage:

• First journey, about AD 46–48. With Barnabas to Cyprus and the highlands of southern Turkey. At Lystra a crowd hails him as the god Mercury; days later the same town stones him.
• Second journey. Into Europe: Philippi, Thessalonica, then Athens, where he preaches from an altar “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD” (Acts 17:23), and eighteen months at Corinth. An inscription at Delphi puts the governor Gallio there in AD 51–52, the one fixed date of his life.
• Third journey. Two to three years at Ephesus, until the silversmiths who sell shrines of Artemis start a riot in the theater.
• To Rome. Arrested in the Temple about AD 57, he appeals to Caesar, survives a shipwreck on Malta and reaches Rome as a prisoner.

The letter writer

Thirteen letters in the New Testament carry his name. Nearly all scholars accept seven as his own: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. The other six are disputed, and Hebrews is anonymous. 1 Thessalonians, written about AD 50, may be the oldest Christian writing that survives, older than any Gospel. He dictated, as most ancient writers did, and one letter names the scribe, Tertius (Romans 16:22). These pages gave weddings “Love is patient and is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4) and funerals “Death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

How it ended

Acts closes with Paul under house arrest in Rome, preaching “with all boldness, without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). It never tells his death. Early tradition says Nero had him beheaded outside the city, on the road to Ostia, as told in How did Paul die? The oldest known portrait of him, a fourth-century fresco in Rome’s Catacomb of St Thecla, came to light only in 2009.