Paul the Apostle


Paul, commonly known as Paul the Apostle or Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century AD. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age, and he also founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD.
The main sources of information on Paul's life and works are Paul's letters and the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. Approximately half of its content documents his travels, preaching, and miracles. Paul was not one of the Twelve Apostles, and he did not know Jesus during his lifetime. Nonetheless, Paul was a contemporary of Jesus and personally knew eyewitnesses of Jesus such as his closest disciples and brother James since the mid 30s AD, within a few years of the crucifixion. He had knowledge of the life of Jesus and his teachings. According to the Acts, Paul lived as a Pharisee and participated in the persecution of early disciples of Jesus before his conversion. On his way to arrest Christians in Damascus, Paul saw a bright light, heard Christ speak, was blinded, and later healed by Ananias. After these events, Paul was baptized, beginning immediately to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish messiah and the Son of God. He made three missionary journeys to spread the Christian message to non-Jewish communities.
Fourteen of the 27 books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic. Of the other six, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus are generally considered pseudepigraphical, while Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are debated. Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is almost universally rejected by scholars. The other six are believed by some scholars to have come from followers writing in his name, using material from Paul's surviving letters and letters written by him that no longer survive.
Today, Paul's epistles continue to be vital roots of the theology, worship, and pastoral life in the Latin and Protestant traditions of the West, as well as the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the East. Paul's influence on Christian thought and practice is pervasive in scope and profound in impact. Christians, notably in the Lutheran tradition, have read Paul as advocating a law-free Gospel against Judaism. He has been accused of corrupting or hijacking Christianity, often by introducing pagan or Hellenistic themes to the early church. There has recently been increasing acceptance of Paul as a fundamentally Jewish figure in line with the original disciples in Jerusalem over past interpretations, manifested through movements like "Paul Within Judaism".

Names

Paul's Jewish name was "Saul", perhaps after the biblical King Saul, the first king of Israel and, like Paul, a member of the Tribe of Benjamin; the Latin name Paulus, meaning small, was not a result of his conversion as is commonly believed but a second name for use in communicating with a Greco-Roman audience.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was a Roman citizen. As such, he bore the Latin name Paulus, which is transliterated in biblical Greek as Παῦλος. It was not uncommon for the Jews of that time to have two names: one Hebrew, the other Latin or Greek.
Jesus called him "Saul, Saul" in "the Hebrew tongue" in the Acts of the Apostles, when he had the vision which led to his conversion on the road to Damascus. Later, in a vision to Ananias of Damascus, "the Lord" referred to him as "Saul, of Tarsus". When Ananias came to restore his sight, he called him "Brother Saul".
In Acts 13:9, Saul is called "Paul" for the first time on the island of Cyprus, much later than the time of his conversion. The author of Luke–Acts indicates that the names were interchangeable: "Saul, who also is called Paul." He refers to him as Paul through the remainder of Acts, except in the accounts of the events that occurred on his way to Damascus, where it is reported that the voice from heaven, and, later, Ananias of Damascus, called him Σαούλ, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name. Paul was apparently Paul's own preference, since he always refers to himself as Paul in his letters. Adopting his Roman name was typical of Paul's missionary style. His method was to put people at ease and approach them with his message in a language and style that was relatable to them, as he did in 1 Corinthians 9.
If Saul/Paul was born a Roman citizen, as is claimed in Acts 22:25-29, his parents, and perhaps their ancestors, must have been Roman citizens as well. Hence, he would probably have been given a full Roman name at birth, the tria nomina of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen, with Paulus as his cognomen. There is no information about the Roman patron of Paul's ancestors, or the ruler at the time of their enfranchisement, but if Paul's ancestors had been granted Roman citizenship under the auspices of Gaius Julius Caesar, for example, Paul’s full name may have been Γάϊος Ἰούλιος Παῦλος ὁ καὶ Σαούλ, when expressed in Greek, and C. Julius Paulus qui est Saoul, when expressed in Latin.

Available sources

The main source for information about Paul's life is the material found in his epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. However, the epistles contain little information about Paul's pre-conversion past. The Acts of the Apostles recounts more information but leaves several parts of Paul's life out of its narrative, such as his probable but undocumented execution in Rome. The Acts of the Apostles also appear to contradict Paul's epistles on multiple matters, in particular concerning the frequency of Paul's visits to the church in Jerusalem, though recent scholarship has challenged the idea that the Paul of Acts and the letters share little resemblance.
Sources outside the New Testament that mention Paul include:

Early life

The two main sources of information that give access to the earliest segments of Paul's career are the Acts of the Apostles and the autobiographical elements of Paul's letters to the early Christian communities. Paul was likely born between the years of 5 BC and 5 AD. The Acts of the Apostles indicates that Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, but Helmut Koester took issue with the evidence presented by the text. Some have suggested that Paul's ancestors may have been freedmen from among the thousands of Jews whom Pompey took as slaves in 63 BC, which would explain how he was born into Roman citizenship, as slaves of Roman citizens gained citizenship upon emancipation.
He was from a devout Jewish family based in the city of Tarsus, which was part of the Roman province of Cilicia. Tarsus was one of the larger centers of trade on the Mediterranean coast and renowned for its academy. It had been among the most influential cities in Asia Minor since the time of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC.
Paul referred to himself as being "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee". The Bible reveals very little about Paul's family. Acts quotes Paul referring to his family by saying he was "a Pharisee, born of Pharisees". Paul's nephew, his sister's son, is mentioned in Acts 23:16.
The family had a history of religious piety. Apparently, the family lineage had been very attached to Pharisaic traditions and observances for generations. Acts says that he was an artisan involved in the leather crafting or tent-making profession. This was to become an initial connection with Priscilla and Aquila, with whom he would partner in tent-making and later become very important teammates as fellow missionaries.
While he was still fairly young, he was sent to Jerusalem to receive his education at the school of Gamaliel, one of the most noted teachers of Jewish law in history. Although modern scholarship accepts that Paul was educated under the supervision of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, he was not preparing to become a scholar of Jewish law, and probably never had any contact with the Hillelite school. Some of his family may have resided in Jerusalem since later the son of one of his sisters saved his life there. Nothing more is known of his biography until he takes an active part in the martyrdom of Stephen, a Hellenised diaspora Jew.
Some modern scholarship argues that while Paul was fluent in Koine Greek, the language he used to write his letters, his first language was probably Aramaic. In his letters, Paul drew heavily on his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the Gospel and to explain his Christology.

Persecutor of early Christians

Paul says that before his conversion, he persecuted early Christians "beyond measure", more specifically Hellenised diaspora Jewish members who had returned to the area of Jerusalem. Paul does not describe explicitly what form this persecution took. According to James Dunn, the Jerusalem community consisted of "Hebrews", Jews speaking both Aramaic and Greek, and "Hellenists", Jews speaking only Greek, possibly diaspora Jews who had resettled in Jerusalem. Paul's initial persecution of Christians probably was directed against these Greek-speaking "Hellenists" due to their anti-Temple attitude. Within the early Jewish Christian community, this also set them apart from the "Hebrews" and their continuing participation in the Temple cult.