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St. Paul the Apostle
Table of Contents
St. Paul the Apostle

 * Introduction & Top Questions
   
 * 
   Sources
   
 * 
   Life
   
 * 
   Mission
   
 * 
   Travels and letters
   
 * 
   Basic message
   
 * 
   Churches
   
 * 
   Moral teachings
   
 * Theological views
    * Monotheism
   
    * Christology
   
    * Faith in Christ
   
    * The body of Christ
   
    * Jewish law
   
    * The return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead

 * 
   Achievement and influence
   

Fast Facts
 * 2-Min Summary
 * Top Questions
    * What influences did St. Paul have on Christianity?
    * How many books of the Bible did St. Paul write?
    * How did St. Paul the Apostle die?

 * Facts & Related Content

Media
 * Videos
 * Images

More
 * More Articles On This Topic
 * Additional Reading
 * Contributors
 * Article History

Related Biographies
 * St. Peter the Apostle
   Christian Apostle
 * St. Augustine
   Christian bishop and theologian
 * St. Luke
   biblical author
 * St. Athanasius
   Egyptian theologian
 * See All

Home Philosophy & Religion Religious Personages & Scholars Saints & Popes


ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE

Christian Apostle
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Alternate titles: Saint Paul, Saul of Tarsus
By E.P. Sanders • Last Updated: Aug 12, 2022 • Edit History

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Table of Contents
Caravaggio: The Conversion of St. Paul (second version)
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Born: 4 BCE? Tarsus Turkey ...(Show more) Died: c.62? Rome Italy ...(Show more)
Notable Works: Pauline letters ...(Show more) Subjects Of Study: Christianity
Christology mystical body of Christ ...(Show more) Role In: Council of Jerusalem
...(Show more)
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Top Questions
WHAT INFLUENCES DID ST. PAUL HAVE ON CHRISTIANITY?

St. Paul is often considered to be the most important person after Jesus in the
history of Christianity. His epistles (letters) have had enormous influence on
Christian theology, especially on the relationship between God the Father and
Jesus, and on the mystical human relationship with the divine. In addition to
his extensive theological contributions, St. Paul played a crucial role in the
development of Christianity away from its Jewish parent. Although he held that
Jews and Gentiles alike were called to be transformed into one new humanity in
Christ, his missions were largely focused on the conversion of Gentiles, and
Christianity would eventually become a largely Gentile religion.

Read more below: Achievement and influence
Christianity
Read more about the early history of Christianity.
epistle
Learn about this type of composition written in the form of a letter.
HOW MANY BOOKS OF THE BIBLE DID ST. PAUL WRITE?

Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 or 14 (an East-West difference) are
traditionally attributed to St. Paul. However, only seven of these are accepted
as being entirely authentic: Letter of Paul to the Romans, both Letters of Paul
to the Corinthians, Letter of Paul to the Galatians, Letter of Paul to the
Philippians, First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, and Letter of Paul to
Philemon. The authorship of the others is debated and may have come from
followers writing in Paul’s name. The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, the
Letter of Paul to the Colossians, the Second Letter of Paul to the
Thessalonians, both Letters of Paul to Timothy, the Letter of Paul to Titus, and
the Letter to the Hebrews are of uncertain authorship.

Read more below: Sources
New Testament
Learn about the New Testament, the second and smaller of the two major divisions
of the Christian Bible.
HOW DID ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE DIE?

The exact details of St. Paul’s death are unknown, but tradition holds that he
was beheaded in Rome and thus died as a martyr for his faith. His death was
perhaps part of the executions of Christians ordered by the Roman emperor Nero
following the great fire in the city in 64 CE. It is known that St. Paul was
imprisoned in Rome and wrote several of his epistles (letters) during his
captivity there.

martyr
Learn about the practice of martyrdom in Christianity.
Nero
Read about the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Nero (54–68
CE).
Summary


READ A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THIS TOPIC





St. Paul the Apostle, original name Saul of Tarsus, (born 4 bce?, Tarsus in
Cilicia [now in Turkey]—died c. 62–64 ce, Rome [Italy]), one of the leaders of
the first generation of Christians, often considered to be the most important
person after Jesus in the history of Christianity. In his own day, although he
was a major figure within the very small Christian movement, he also had many
enemies and detractors, and his contemporaries probably did not accord him as
much respect as they gave Peter and James. Paul was compelled to struggle,
therefore, to establish his own worth and authority. His surviving letters,
however, have had enormous influence on subsequent Christianity and secure his
place as one of the greatest religious leaders of all time.




SOURCES


St. Paul in prison

Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 are attributed to Paul, and
approximately half of another, Acts of the Apostles, deals with Paul’s life and
works. Thus, about half of the New Testament stems from Paul and the people whom
he influenced. Only 7 of the 13 letters, however, can be accepted as being
entirely authentic (dictated by Paul himself). The others come from followers
writing in his name, who often used material from his surviving letters and who
may have had access to letters written by Paul that no longer survive. Although
frequently useful, the information in Acts is secondhand, and it is sometimes in
direct conflict with the letters. The seven undoubted letters constitute the
best source of information on Paul’s life and especially his thought; in the
order in which they appear in the New Testament, they are Romans, 1 Corinthians,
2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The
probable chronological order (leaving aside Philemon, which cannot be dated) is
1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and
Romans. Letters considered “Deutero-Pauline” (probably written by Paul’s
followers after his death) are Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians; 1 and
2 Timothy and Titus are “Trito-Pauline” (probably written by members of the
Pauline school a generation after his death).




LIFE

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from Asia Minor. His birthplace, Tarsus, was a
major city in eastern Cilicia, a region that had been made part of the Roman
province of Syria by the time of Paul’s adulthood. Two of the main cities of
Syria, Damascus and Antioch, played a prominent part in his life and letters.
Although the exact date of his birth is unknown, he was active as a missionary
in the 40s and 50s of the 1st century ce. From this it may be inferred that he
was born about the same time as Jesus (c. 4 bce) or a little later. He was
converted to faith in Jesus Christ about 33 ce, and he died, probably in Rome,
circa 62–64 ce.

In his childhood and youth, Paul learned how to “work with [his] own hands” (1
Corinthians 4:12). His trade, tent making, which he continued to practice after
his conversion to Christianity, helps to explain important aspects of his
apostleship. He could travel with a few leather-working tools and set up shop
anywhere. It is doubtful that his family was wealthy or aristocratic, but, since
he found it noteworthy that he sometimes worked with his own hands, it may be
assumed that he was not a common labourer. His letters are written in Koine, or
“common” Greek, rather than in the elegant literary Greek of his wealthy
contemporary the Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, and this too
argues against the view that Paul was an aristocrat. Moreover, he knew how to
dictate, and he could write with his own hand in large letters (Galatians 6:11),
though not in the small, neat letters of the professional scribe.

Until about the midpoint of his life, Paul was a member of the Pharisees, a
religious party that emerged during the later Second Temple period. What little
is known about Paul the Pharisee reflects the character of the Pharisaic
movement. Pharisees believed in life after death, which was one of Paul’s
deepest convictions. They accepted nonbiblical “traditions” as being about as
important as the written Bible; Paul refers to his expertise in “traditions”
(Galatians 1:14). Pharisees were very careful students of the Hebrew Bible, and
Paul was able to quote extensively from the Greek translation. (It was fairly
easy for a bright, ambitious young boy to memorize the Bible, and it would have
been very difficult and expensive for Paul as an adult to carry around dozens of
bulky scrolls.) By his own account, Paul was the best Jew and the best Pharisee
of his generation (Philippians 3:4–6; Galatians 1:13–14), though he claimed to
be the least apostle of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:22–3; 1 Corinthians 15:9–10)
and attributed his successes to the grace of God.



Paul spent much of the first half of his life persecuting the nascent Christian
movement, an activity to which he refers several times. Paul’s motivations are
unknown, but they seem not to have been connected to his Pharisaism. The chief
persecutors of the Christian movement in Jerusalem were the high priest and his
associates, who were Sadducees (if they belonged to one of the parties), and
Acts depicts the leading Pharisee, Gamaliel, as defending the Christians (Acts
5:34). It is possible that Paul believed that Jewish converts to the new
movement were not sufficiently observant of the Jewish law, that Jewish converts
mingled too freely with Gentile (non-Jewish) converts, thus associating
themselves with idolatrous practices, or that the notion of a crucified messiah
was objectionable. The young Paul certainly would have rejected the view that
Jesus had been raised after his death—not because he doubted resurrection as
such but because he would not have believed that God chose to favour Jesus by
raising him before the time of the Judgment of the world.

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Whatever his reasons, Paul’s persecutions probably involved traveling from
synagogue to synagogue and urging the punishment of Jews who accepted Jesus as
the messiah. Disobedient members of synagogues were punished by some form of
ostracism or by light flogging, which Paul himself later suffered at least five
times (2 Corinthians 11:24), though he does not say when or where. According to
Acts, Paul began his persecutions in Jerusalem, a view at odds with his
assertion that he did not know any of the Jerusalem followers of Christ until
well after his own conversion (Galatians 1:4–17).


St. Paul the Apostle

Paul was on his way to Damascus when he had a vision that changed his life:
according to Galatians 1:16, God revealed his Son to him. More specifically,
Paul states that he saw the Lord (1 Corinthians 9:1), though Acts claims that
near Damascus he saw a blinding bright light. Following this revelation, which
convinced Paul that God had indeed chosen Jesus to be the promised messiah, he
went into Arabia—probably Coele-Syria, west of Damascus (Galatians 1:17). He
then returned to Damascus, and three years later he went to Jerusalem to become
acquainted with the leading apostles there. After this meeting he began his
famous missions to the west, preaching first in his native Syria and Cilicia
(Galatians 1:17–24). During the next 20 years or so (c. mid-30s to mid-50s), he
established several churches in Asia Minor and at least three in Europe,
including the church at Corinth.



During the course of his missions, Paul realized that his preaching to Gentiles
was creating difficulties for the Christians in Jerusalem, who thought that
Gentiles must become Jewish in order to join the Christian movement. To settle
the issue, Paul returned to Jerusalem and struck a deal. It was agreed that
Peter would be the principal apostle to Jews and Paul the principal apostle to
Gentiles. Paul would not have to change his message, but he would take up a
collection for the Jerusalem church, which was in need of financial support
(Galatians 2:1–10; 2 Corinthians 8–9; Romans 15:16–17, 25–26), though Paul’s
Gentile churches were hardly well off. In Romans 15:16–17 Paul seems to
interpret the “offering of the Gentiles” symbolically, suggesting that it is the
prophesied Gentile pilgrimage to the Temple of Jerusalem, with their wealth in
their hands (e.g., Isaiah 60:1–6). It is also obvious that Paul and the
Jerusalem apostles made a political bargain not to interfere in each other’s
spheres. The “circumcision faction” of the Jerusalem apostles (Galatians
2:12–13), which argued that converts should undergo circumcision as a sign of
accepting the covenant between God and Abraham, later broke this agreement by
preaching to the Gentile converts both in Antioch (Galatians 2:12) and Galatia
and insisting that they be circumcised, leading to some of Paul’s strongest
invective (Galatians 1:7–9; 3:1; 5:2–12; 6:12–13).



In the late 50s Paul returned to Jerusalem with the money he had raised and a
few of his Gentile converts. There he was arrested for taking a Gentile too far
into the Temple precincts, and, after a series of trials, he was sent to Rome.
Later Christian tradition favours the view that he was executed there (1 Clement
5:1–7), perhaps as part of the executions of Christians ordered by the Roman
emperor Nero following the great fire in the city in 64 ce.




MISSION OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE


St. Paul the Apostle

Paul believed that his vision proved that Jesus lived in heaven, that Jesus was
the Messiah and God’s Son, and that he would soon return. Moreover, Paul thought
that the purpose of this revelation was his own appointment to preach among the
Gentiles (Galatians 1:16). By the time of his last extant letter, Romans, he
could clearly describe his own place in God’s plan. The Hebrew prophets, he
wrote, had predicted that in “days to come” God would restore the tribes of
Israel and that the Gentiles would then turn to worship the one true God. Paul
maintained that his place in this scheme was to win the Gentiles, both Greeks
and “barbarians”—the common term for non-Greeks at the time (Romans 1:14).
“Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry in
order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them” (Romans
11:13–14). In two other places in Romans 11—verses 25–26 (“the full number of
the Gentiles [will] come in” and thus “all Israel will be saved”) and 30–31 (“by
the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy”)—Paul asserts that he
would save some of Israel indirectly, through jealousy, and that Jews would be
brought to Christ because of the successful Gentile mission. Thus, Paul’s view
reversed the traditional understanding of God’s plan, according to which Israel
would be restored before the Gentiles were converted. Whereas Peter, James, and
John, the chief apostles to the circumcised (Galatians 2:6–10), had been
relatively unsuccessful, God had led Paul through Asia Minor and Greece “in
triumph” and had used him to spread “the fragrance that comes from knowing him
[God]” (2 Corinthians 2:14). Since in Paul’s view God’s plan could not be
frustrated, he concluded that it would work in reverse sequence—first the
Gentiles, then the Jews.

Paul’s technique for winning Gentiles is uncertain, but one possibility is that
he delivered lectures in public gathering places (Acts 17:17 ff.). There is,
however, another possibility. Paul conceded that he was not an eloquent speaker
(2 Corinthians 10:10; 11:6). Moreover, he had to spend much, possibly most, of
his time working to support himself. As a tent maker, he worked with leather,
and leatherwork is not noisy. While he worked, therefore, he could have talked,
and once he was found to have something interesting to say, people would have
dropped by from time to time to listen. It is very probable that Paul spread the
gospel in this way.


TRAVELS AND LETTERS


Missionary travels of St. Paul in the eastern Mediterranean

During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, travel was safer than it
would be again until the suppression of pirates in the 19th century. Paul and
his companions sometimes traveled by ship, but much of the time they walked,
probably beside a donkey carrying tools, clothes, and perhaps some scrolls.
Occasionally they had plenty, but often they were hungry, ill-clad, and cold
(Philippians 4:11–12; 2 Corinthians 11:27), and at times they had to rely on the
charity of their converts.

Paul wanted to keep pressing west and therefore only occasionally had the
opportunity to revisit his churches. He tried to keep up his converts’ spirits,
answer their questions, and resolve their problems by letter and by sending one
or more of his assistants (especially Timothy and Titus). Paul’s letters reveal
a remarkable human being: dedicated, compassionate, emotional, sometimes harsh
and angry, clever and quick-witted, supple in argumentation, and above all
possessing a soaring, passionate commitment to God, Jesus Christ, and his own
mission. Fortunately, after his death one of his followers collected some of the
letters, edited them very slightly, and published them. They constitute one of
history’s most remarkable personal contributions to religious thought and
practice.

Despite Paul’s intemperate outburst in 1 Corinthians—“women should be silent in
the churches” (14:34–36)—women played a large part in his missionary endeavour.
Chloe was an important member of the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:11), and
Phoebe was a “deacon” and a “benefactor” of Paul and others (Romans 16:1–2).
Romans 16 names eight other women active in the Christian movement, including
Junia (“prominent among the apostles”), Mary (“who has worked very hard among
you”), and Julia. Women were frequently among the major supporters of new
religious movements, and Christianity was no exception.

Although in his own view Paul was the true and authoritative apostle to the
Gentiles, chosen for the task from his mother’s womb (Galatians 1:15–16; 2:7–8;
Romans 11:13–14), he was only one of several missionaries spawned by the early
Christian movement. Some of the other Christian workers must have been quite
important; indeed, an unknown minister of Christ established the church at Rome
before Paul arrived in the city. Paul treated some of these possible
competitors—such as Prisca, Aquila, Junia, and Andronicus—in a very friendly
manner (Romans 16: 3, 7), while he looked on others with suspicion or hostility.
He was especially wary of Apollos, a Christian missionary known to the
Corinthians (1 Corinthians 3:1–22), and he vilified competitors in Corinth as
false apostles and ministers of Satan (2 Corinthians 11). He called down God’s
curse on competing preachers in Galatia (Galatians 1:6–9) and asserted that some
of the Christians in Jerusalem were “false brothers” (Galatians 2:4; compare 2
Corinthians 11:26). Only in the latter two cases, however, is the nature of the
disagreement known: Paul’s competitors opposed his admitting Gentiles to the
Christian movement without requiring them to become Jewish. The polemical
sections of Paul’s letters have been used in Christian controversies ever since.


BASIC MESSAGE

In the surviving letters, Paul often recalls what he said during his founding
visits. He preached the death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus Christ, and
he proclaimed that faith in Jesus guarantees a share in his life. Writing to the
Galatians, he reminded them “it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was
publicly exhibited as crucified” (Galatians 3:1), and writing to the Corinthians
he recalled that he had known nothing among them “except Jesus Christ, and him
crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). According to Paul, Jesus’ death was not a defeat
but was for the believers’ benefit. In accord with ancient sacrificial theology,
Jesus’ death substituted for that of others and thereby freed believers from sin
and guilt (Romans 3:23–25). A second interpretation of Christ’s death appears in
Galatians and Romans: those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his
death, and thus they escape the power of sin (e.g., Romans 6). In the first
case, Jesus died so that the believers’ sins will be purged. In the second, he
died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him.
These two ideas obviously coincide (see below Christology).

The resurrection of Christ was also of primary importance, as Paul revealed in
his Letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest surviving account of conversion to
the Christian movement. Written to Thessalonica in Macedonia possibly as early
as 41 ce and no later than 51—thus no more than 20 years after Jesus’ death—the
letter states (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10),

> For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had
> among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true
> God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus,
> who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

Since Jesus was raised and still lives, he could return to rescue believers at
the time of the Final Judgment. The resurrection is connected to the third major
emphasis, the promise of salvation to believers. Paul taught that those who died
in Christ would be raised when he returned, while those still alive would be
“caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air” (1
Thessalonians 4:14–18).

These and many other passages reveal the essence of the Christian message: (1)
God sent his Son; (2) the Son was crucified and resurrected for the benefit of
humanity; (3) the Son would soon return; and (4) those who belonged to the Son
would live with him forever. Paul’s gospel, like those of others, also included
(5) the admonition to live by the highest moral standard: “May your spirit and
soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). See below Moral teachings.



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