Paul the Apostle (c. 5 CE - c. 65 CE), also known as Saul of Tarsus, was an early Christian missionary and writer whose letters make up a substantial portion of the New Testament. Initially a persecutor of the first Christian communities, he became after a conversion experience the principal advocate of admitting non-Jews to the movement without requiring observance of the Jewish law. [1] His journeys through Asia Minor, Greece and Rome established congregations across the eastern Mediterranean, and his epistles are the earliest surviving Christian documents. [2]
Background
Paul was born around 5 CE at Tarsus in Cilicia, a Greek-speaking city of the Roman province in what is now southern Turkey. According to the accounts in the New Testament he was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee by training, and a Roman citizen by birth, a status that later shaped the course of his trials. He worked as a tentmaker or leatherworker. [1]
The Acts of the Apostles states that he studied in Jerusalem under the teacher Gamaliel. His own letters describe him as having been zealous for ancestral tradition and as having persecuted the earliest followers of Jesus. [3]
Conversion and mission
Paul describes a revelation of the risen Jesus that reversed his hostility to the movement; Acts sets this event on the road to Damascus. He understood the experience as a commission to proclaim the message to gentiles, and his letters refer to a period in Arabia and in Damascus before he consulted the leaders in Jerusalem. [1]
Over some two decades he travelled through Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia and Achaia, founding and supporting congregations in cities including Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica and Corinth, supporting himself by his trade. [2]
The question of whether gentile converts had to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law brought him into dispute with other leaders, notably at the meeting in Jerusalem described in Acts 15 and in the confrontation with Peter at Antioch recorded in the letter to the Galatians. The position that prevailed, that gentiles could be admitted without those requirements, was decisive for the development of Christianity as a movement distinct from Judaism. [3]
Letters and theology
Seven letters are accepted by most scholars as certainly written by Paul: Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians and Philemon. Six further letters in the New Testament bear his name, and their authorship is debated. [4]
Written to specific communities about specific disputes, the letters nonetheless set out the ideas that became central to Christian theology: justification through faith, the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the church as a single body composed of many members, and the equal standing of Jew and gentile within it. [2]
Arrest and death
Acts records that Paul was arrested in Jerusalem after a disturbance in the Temple, held at Caesarea, and appealed to the emperor as a Roman citizen, which brought him to Rome under guard after a shipwreck at Malta. [1]
The New Testament does not describe his death. Early Christian tradition holds that he was executed at Rome, most often dated to the reign of Nero in the mid-60s CE, and that as a citizen he was beheaded rather than crucified. The Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome was built over the site traditionally identified as his tomb. [2]
Legacy
Paul's letters have been read continuously for nearly two thousand years and were central to the theology of Augustine, to Martin Luther's doctrine of justification, and to the Protestant Reformation more broadly. [3]
Modern scholarship has increasingly emphasised his continuing identity as a Jew and read his arguments within the Judaism of the first century, an approach known as the new perspective on Paul. He remains among the most studied figures of antiquity. [4]
