Oratorio, op.36, by Mendelssohn, to a text by Julius Schubring after the Acts of the Apostles (1836, Düsseldorf).

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Paul (d. c.65), apostle of the Gentiles. A Jew, born at Tarsus and brought up by Gamaliel as a pharisee, Saul was first a persecutor of Christianity, who took part in the stoning of Stephen, sought out Christians and had them imprisoned, but on his way to Damascus experienced a vision of Christ which was to be decisive in determining the future course of his life. The substance of the experience caused a conviction that Jesus was in some way identified with the Christian Church and that Paul was to bring the Christian faith to the Gentiles. He was then baptized, retired to Arabia for about three years of prayer and solitude, and returned to Damascus. There his Jewish enemies were so hostile that he escaped by night, lowered in a basket over the city wall, and went to Jerusalem where he was received with some hesitation until Barnabas quelled the doubts of the community. Some years later he worked at Antioch and its vicinity, where he reproved Peter for appearing to compromise with the Jews. The three missionary journeys followed, first to Cyprus, then to Asia Minor and eastern Greece, lastly to Ephesus where he made a prolonged stay and wrote 1 Corinthians, then to Macedonia and Achaia, where he wrote Romans, before returning to Jerusalem. There he was attacked and beaten by a mob for preaching against the enactments of the Jewish Law, but Paul invoked his privileges as a Roman citizen and eventually appealed to Caesar for a trial at Rome, as his life was in danger from religious extremists. On the voyage to Rome he suffered shipwreck at Malta; when he reached it, he was under house-arrest for two years, during which he wrote the four ‘captivity’ epistles. Presumably he was acquitted at his trial, for he probably revisited Ephesus and may even have gone to Spain. According to tradition he was martyred at Rome during the persecution of Nero, being beheaded (as a Roman citizen) at Tre Fontane and buried where the basilica of St. Paul ‘outside the walls’ now stands. The belief that Peter and Paul died on the same day was caused by their sharing the same feast of 29 June.

Paul was not only a tireless missionary: he was also a powerful thinker, saturated in the Mystery of Christ; his epistles, most of which were written for particular practical needs, led to the development of Christian theology on them as one of its principal foundations. His key ideas included that of Redemption through faith in Christ who abrogated the Old Law and began the era of the Spirit; Christ is not only Messiah, but the eternal Son of God, pre-existing before the Incarnation and exalted after the Resurrection to God's right hand; the Church is the (mystical) Body of Christ, and the believer lives in Christ and will eventually be transformed by the final resurrection. It is difficult to overemphasize the influence of Paul on Christian thought and history, through Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and other writers as well in conciliar documents.

The apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla say that he was small in stature, bald and bandy-legged, with a long nose and eyebrows meeting; many representations of Paul depict a fairly constant image of a long face and long beard with a bald head and deep-set eyes. His usual emblems area sword and a book. Never quite as popular as Peter, he nevertheless appears in art frequently with him or among the twelve apostles (where Paul often displaces Matthias). Ancient English churches dedicated to Paul alone number only forty-three, but there were 283 which were dedicated to Peter and Paul. Like Peter, his name has attracted numerous apocryphal writings, such as the Acts of Paul, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Martyrdom of Paul, and the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which date from the 2nd to the 4th centuries. As with the apocryphal gospels, the best way to judge their worth is to compare them with the canonical writings. They did, however, enjoy a certain uncritical popularity.

The colourful and adventurous preaching career of Paul described in the Acts of the Apostles provided artists with material for his representation. Famous English examples include the fresco in St. Anselm's Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral (late 12th century), an enamel in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and innumerable initial miniatures in the famous Bibles of the 12th century. Statues and stained-glass representations must be even more numerous. Besides the usual joint feast on 29 June, there are subsidiary feasts of Paul on 25 January (Conversion) and (until 1969) 30 June (Commemoration). He is patron of Greece and Malta.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• Acts of the Apostles and Epistles of Paul (Galatians is important for the chronology; Romans and Ephesians for the doctrine). Innumerable studies include W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller (1908); G. Ogg, The Chronology of the Life of Paul (1966); F. Prat, The Theology of St. Paul (Eng. tr., 2 vols., 1927–34); L. Cerfaux, La Théologie de l'Église suivant S. Paul (1942); id., Le Christ dans la théologie de S. Paul (1951); Studia Paulina (1953); Studiorum Paulinorum Congressus Internationalis (Analecta Biblica, 1963); E. P. Sanders, Paul (1991)

St. Paul (died c. 66 A.D.), the first systematic theologian and writer of the Christian Church, has been the most influential teacher in the history of Christianity. He was the Christian Church's apostle to the Gentiles.

Paul, whose original name was Saul or Sh'aul, was born in the town of Tarsus, Cilicia (in modern southeastern Turkey), of Jewish parents belonging to the tribe of Benjamin. Both his parents were Roman citizens. It is safe to assume that Paul's earliest language was Koine Greek, the household language of all educated Roman citizens throughout the empire. Paul was sent at an early age to Jerusalem to attend Bible school. Studying with a famous rabbi, Gamaliel, he learned to write in both Greek and Hebrew and became thoroughly versed in the law. It seems certain that Paul studied in Jerusalem during the three years of Jesus' public life and that he was present at the time that Jesus was crucified by the Romans. He may even have seen and heard Jesus preach. He certainly must have heard of Jesus and his movement among the people.

Paul's Times

Paul lived in the closing days of the Second Jewish Commonwealth. When he was young and studying rabbinic theology, Palestine already lay under complete Roman domination. The Jewish people no longer exercised any real national sovereignty. The traditional boundaries of Israel, as known from the previous Hasmonaean and Salamonic kingdoms, had been severely reduced. Rome preferred to govern its captive peoples by dividing them into manageable provinces. By the time Paul had converted to Christianity and was launched on his extensive missionary journeys, affairs in Palestine had taken a turn for the worse. The calm and relative stability that had lasted during the reign of King Agrippa I, was severely shaken after his death. A new spirit of nationalism and revolt against the foreign invader rose among the leading Jewish class, the Pharisees. Throughout Palestine the younger generation of Pharisees molded the spirit of the people in such a way that the Jewish revolt of 66 A.D. and the consequent destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. became inevitable.

Paul derived from his early education a thorough knowledge of both the oral and the written Jewish law. He also learned of the traditional rabbinic method of scriptural interpretation and commentary. Paul was thus heir to the long, rich, and varied tradition of Pharisaism as it culminated in the latter days of the Second Temple. Apparently, Paul had gained an outstanding reputation as a young rabbinic student because he was authorized by the Jewish authorities to seek out and prosecute members of a new sect who proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Paul apparently made several trips throughout Palestine in search of Christians. On one such trip from Jerusalem to Damascus, about the year 34 A.D., Paul was completely changed.

Paul's Conversion

Four accounts of Paul's conversion exist (Acts 9:3-19; 22:6-21; 26:12-18; and Galatians 1:12-16). According to the essential spirit of these sources, Paul underwent a supernatural experience in which he came to believe that Jesus was actually the Messiah of Israel and that God had called Paul to preach the message of Jesus to all men. The story adds that he was blinded and forced to fast for three days until a Christian named Ananais laid hands on him and restored his sight, after which he was baptized. The usual date assigned to this event is between 34 and 36 A.D.

Paul spent the next three years of his life in Damascus with the Christians. He then returned to Jerusalem and was accepted by Peter and the other Christians. Paul then went to his home city of Tarsus and spent about six years preaching in parts of Syria and Cilicia. After a final year spent at Antioch, he and Barnabas were commissioned by the Christian authorities to go to the surrounding nations and preach the Christian message.

Missionary Journeys

During the next 15 years Paul undertook three extensive journeys in the eastern Mediterranean region. At the time Paul undertook his travels, that part of the world was protected by the Pax Romana. Paul had no difficulty in traveling or in communicating. Throughout the eastern Mediterranean a network of well-guarded and well-preserved roads, serviced by Roman garrisons, connected fortified and prosperous towns. A common language, Koine Greek, was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean and was used for all communications. Correspondence by mail was a daily and ordinary method of communication. Furthermore, sea lanes for commerce and for passenger traffic were open between Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, North Africa, and the main Greek islands.

Throughout the eastern Mediterranean, scattered but well-organized communities of Jews existed in all the principal localities. Between these Jewish communities and the central authority in Jerusalem, constant communication was maintained. The communities of Jews living outside Palestine depended upon the Palestinian authorities for the fixing of the Jewish calendar, the regulation of the Jewish year, the offering of sacrifices in the Temple, and the general authentication of doctrines, scrolls, and teachers.

Until the latter period of his life, Paul moved through these Jewish communities as a Jew. This fact has often been obscured by the later opposition between Paul and the Jews and between Christianity and Judaism. Only toward the end of his life was Paul not welcome in the synagogues of the Jewish communities. Christians in general were refused entry into synagogues only in the last 20 years of the first century.

Paul's first journey, which began about 45 A.D., took him through Cyprus and southeastern Turkey; he then returned to Antioch by the same path. On his second journey, Paul went overland through Turkey and then to mainland Greece, passing through Athens and returning to Palestine in the same year through Rhodes. He landed at Tyre on the shores of Palestine about 52 A.D. During this second journey Paul wrote his two Letters to the Thessalonians. On his third journey, Paul departed from Antioch, again traveled across Turkey, visited Ephesus and Chios, and then proceeded through Macedonia to visit mainland Greece again. He returned home by sea from the southwest coast of Turkey to the Palestinian port of Tyre. During this third journey, Paul composed his Letter to the Galatians, his two Letters to the Corinthians, and his Letter to the Romans.

Between the beginning of his missionary journeys and his death, Paul wrote a number of letters that later became part of the Christian New Testament. Before his death he composed a total of 13 letters. A 14th letter, the Letter to the Hebrews, traditionally bearing Paul's name, is now generally considered to have been written by a disciple of Paul's.

Paul's teaching rested on three main principles: Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah foretold by the prophets of Israel; by his death, Jesus had atoned for all men's sins and opened heaven for humanity; the Mosaic Law had, by the fact of Jesus' salvation, been abrogated and replaced by the Law of Jesus. There was, therefore, no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile. Paul frequently used texts from the Bible to prove his points, interpreting them according to the rabbinic method of exegesis that he had learned in Jerusalem.

Attitude toward the Law and the Jews

Two outstanding traits of Paul's writings concern the Jewish law and the Jewish people as the chosen ones of God. His attitude on both points requires explanation. In regard to the law, Paul believed that since Christ had come the law had not been merely changed and ennobled but that it had been abrogated. Later anti-Semitism fed on Paul's terminology and concepts in describing the Jewish law, oral and written, as merely an exercise in legalities. No trace of this negative attitude exists in Paul's writings. A persuasion is posited that all the nobility of the law and all the salvation promised to the law had been transferred to the new law of Jesus. Paul separated world history into two distinct parts: the time prior to the coming of Jesus, when the law was God's manifest way of leading men to salvation; and the time after the death of Jesus, when belief in and love of Jesus was the sole means of salvation.

In his later days, Paul probably eliminated any necessity of observing the law. In order to understand his attitude, it is well to remember that the Council of Jerusalem (ca. 49 A.D.) had liberated all Jewish converts to Christianity from any obligation of observing the Jewish law. As Paul progressed in his teachings, he came up against sterner and sterner opposition from the Jewish authorities. Doubtless, this opposition hardened Paul in his opinion that the Jewish law served only to blind the Jews and possibly the Gentiles to the truth of Jesus.

A constant doubt, however, remained in Paul's mind concerning his attitude to the Jews as the chosen people. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul declared that the Jews were and would remain the chosen people of God. He asserted this, as he remarked, because God's decisions are immutable. On the other hand, as a Christian believer, he maintained that Christians occupied a special place in God's favor since they had become the carriers of the salvation of Jesus, which had become predominant in God's scheme for man. In order to escape this difficulty, Paul resorted to the subterfuge of declaring that the Jews remained the chosen people but that a veil of ignorance had been drawn over their eyes. He declared that this veil would be lifted only on the last day, when the world came to an end and Jesus returned to judge all men.

Teaching Methods

Paul's teaching methods never altered throughout his missionary journeys. In every town he visited, he went to the local synagogue or meeting place of the Jewish community and preached first to the Jews. He then preached to the local Gentiles. However, as his name became known and as his preaching expanded, Paul encountered greater and greater opposition from the Jewish communities. His preaching then became directed more and more toward the Gentiles. From both Jews and Gentiles, Paul suffered severe physical and social hardships: being whipped, stoned, imprisoned, treated with indignity, and banished on several occasions. He developed from the beginning of his apostolate a rather acid critique of his former coreligionists, maintaining that in following the law of Moses and in refusing to believe in Jesus they were declining to follow their destiny as the chosen people of God. Thus, opposition to Paul mounted in the Jewish communities that were outside Palestine, and the message filtered back to Jerusalem that Paul posed a threat to Judaism in the Diaspora.

Final Journey

Back in Jerusalem after his third missionary journey, Paul proposed a trip to Rome and Spain. During his stay he was recognized by certain Asian Jews, who immediately attacked him as a renegade and troublemaker for the Jewish communities. In the ensuing melee, Paul was saved by the Roman civil authorities who intervened. Paul was arrested as the cause of the disturbance. As a Roman citizen, he was saved from assassination and then transferred to Roman coastal headquarters, Caesarea, where he was tried by the Roman procurator, Felix.

To escape being sent back for trial in Jerusalem, where he would have received certain death, Paul used his right as a Roman citizen to be transferred to Rome for trial by Caesar. He arrived in Rome after a sea voyage in the spring of 60 A.D. During the years of his captivity in Rome, he composed his Letters to the Colossians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to Philemon, to Timothy, and to Titus. Little is known of his subsequent life except that he possibly paid a visit to Spain before his death. He was martyred, according to all accounts, sometime in 66 or 67 A.D. in Rome.

Paul's Influence

Paul's influence as a theologian and thinker throughout the later development of Christianity has been incalculable and all-embracing. He was the first Christian thinker to structure the message of Jesus and his immediate followers into definite doctrines. Paul took the basic facts of Jesus' life and his main formulation of doctrine and molded them into the simple terms of a Semite and Judaic thinker. Using his Hellenistic background and systematic training, Paul translated both facts and doctrine into a broad theological synthesis characterized by a universalism of salvation, an intricate theory of grace, and a central function of Jesus as man and as God. St. Augustine drew on Paul's doctrines to organize his own thought and thus molded all subsequent Roman Catholic theological development and formulation until the 20th century.

It was on Paul too that such medieval theologians as St. Albertus Magnus, St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas drew to substantiate and to authenticate their speculations. Paul's writings also provided the 16th-century reformers with their basic ideas. These religious thinkers preferred to return to Paul's text rather than to adhere to the metaphysical speculations that had developed in Christianity throughout 1,500 years.

Further Reading

The literature on St. Paul is vast. Among studies by Roman Catholic authors are Robert Sencourt, Saint Paul: Envoy of Grace (1948), and Amédée Brunot, Saint Paul and His Message (trans. 1959). Protestant viewpoints on Paul are given in William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (1895); Martin Dibelius, Paul (trans. 1953); William Barclay, The Mind of St. Paul (1958); and Walter Schmithals, The Office of Apostle in the Early Church (1969). Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (trans. 1943), examines Paul's role in early Christianity from the viewpoint of a Jewish scholar. William D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (1948), discusses the influence of Judaism on Paul's teachings. John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (1950), offers a chronology of Paul's life and an interpretation of his role in the formation of Christianity.

Other studies of Paul's life and teachings include Charles H. Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today (1920); Alan H. McNeile, St. Paul: His Life, Letters, and Christian Doctrine (1920); Wilfred L. Knox, St. Paul and the Church of Jerusalem (1925); and Johannes Weiss, The History of Primitive Christianity (1937).

For more information on Saint Paul, visit Britannica.com.

d. A.D. 64? or 67?, the apostle to the Gentiles, b. Tarsus, Asia Minor. He was a Jew. His father was a Roman citizen, probably of some means, and Paul was a tentmaker by trade. His Jewish name was Saul. He was educated in Jerusalem, where he studied under Gamaliel and became a zealous nationalist; he was probably a Pharisee. The chronology of St. Paul's life is difficult, but there is general agreement (within a few years) on almost all details. The hypothetical dates given here are according to one chronological system.

The sources for St. Paul's life are the Acts of the Apostles, in which he is the dominant figure, and the Pauline Epistles. The value of the latter depends on the extent to which they are accepted as genuinely written by the apostle. Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon are undoubted; Ephesians and Second Thessalonians are rejected by most critics; First and Second Timothy and Titus are generally considered to be in their present form later and non-Pauline; finally, Hebrews was not written by St. Paul himself.

Paul's first known contact with Christianity is his presence at the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Soon after this he got a commission from the chief priest to go to Damascus to help suppress Christianity there (A.D. 33). As he approached Damascus he suddenly saw a blinding light and heard Jesus ask, “Why persecutest thou me?” Paul was temporarily blinded and was led into Damascus, where he was found (on the Lord's direction) by the disciple Ananias. On regaining his sight, Paul was baptized and immediately began preaching. (Acts 8.1–3; 9.1–30; 22.3–21; 26.9–23; Gal. 1.12–15.)

Paul spent the next 13 years learning the faith, part of the time living in seclusion in the Arabian desert. He visited Jerusalem probably twice (A.D. 37, 44) and dwelt at Tarsus and Antioch for some time. (Acts 11.) From Antioch, Paul set out on his first missionary journey (Acts 13–14.27; A.D. 47–49), on which he was accompanied by St. Barnabas and for a time by St. Mark. In general the method was to go from city to city preaching in synagogues and in marketplaces. Among the stops on this first mission were Cyprus, Antioch, and Derbe. Churches were set up, and as soon as the little Christian groups seemed strong enough the apostle and his companions would move on. Among their stops were Cyprus, Pamphylia, and Derbe. About A.D. 50 there was a council of the apostles at Jerusalem to discuss whether Gentile Christians should be circumcised, i.e., whether Christianity was to be a Jewish sect. St. Paul opposed the Judaistic group vigorously, and the council decided against them. (Acts 15; Gal. 2.)

On his second mission (Acts 15.36–18.22; A.D. 50–53) Paul, having quarreled with Barnabas, was accompanied by Silas. During visits to Philippi and Salonica they founded two churches that were to become great. They later sailed to Athens where Paul delivered his famous address on the “unknown god” in the market. (Acts 17.16–34.) From Athens, Paul went to Corinth. In the course of a long stay there he wrote First and Second Thessalonians (A.D. 52). Possibly about this time he also wrote his letter to the Galatians, although some scholars think this was the earliest of the epistles (written from Antioch), while others believe it was written later from Ephesus. At length Paul sailed to Caesarea in Palestine and visited Jerusalem again. He spent some time in Antioch.

The third missionary journey of St. Paul (Acts 18.23–21.26; A.D. 53–57) took him to Galatia, then Phrygia, and over to Ephesus. His two-and-a-half-year stay in Ephesus was one of the most fruitful periods of his life; in this time he wrote his two letters to the Corinthians (c.A.D. 56). He went to Corinth to help the Christians there, and he probably wrote the Epistle to the Romans there. Thence he returned to Ephesus and finally to Jerusalem. This was his last visit to the Holy City (A.D. 57–59), for soon after he arrived he was arrested for provoking a riot.

After being held prisoner for two years and after hearings before the council of priests, before the Roman procurator Felix and his successor Festus, before Herod Agrippa II, and again before Festus, he appealed to Rome on his citizen's right. So he was sent to Rome under guard. (Acts 21.27–28.31.) On the way they were shipwrecked on Malta but finally landed at Puteoli (Puzzuoli). Paul was imprisoned (A.D. 60) in Rome but was allowed to conduct his ministry among the Roman Christians and Jews who visited him. Of his final fate tradition says that he was beheaded south of the city, near the Ostian Way, probably during the persecution of Nero. A lesser tradition claims that Paul was released after his first imprisonment and that he went East again, and perhaps also to Spain, before his martyrdom. Some scholars believe that Paul was executed after his initial imprisonment, probably A.D. 62. St. Paul's tomb and shrine are at the Roman basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls.

St. Paul's figure dominates the apostolic age, and his epistles have left a tremendous impress on Christianity. The first Christian theological writing is found in them, where it is characterized rather by spiritual fervor than by systematic analysis. St. Paul became a fountainhead of Christian doctrine, and countless interpretations have been given of his teachings. Thus, Roman Catholic theology leans upon him at all times, and Martin Luther derived from the Epistle to the Romans his principle of justification by faith alone. There can be no doubt that Paul's interpretation of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, his doctrine of the church as the mystical body of Christ, his teaching on law and grace, and his view of justification have been decisive in the formation of the Christian faith. The feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, June 29, is one of the principal days of the church calendar; the conversion of St. Paul is commemorated Jan. 25.

Bibliography

See D. R. McDonald, The Legend and the Apostle (1983); J. A. Ziesler, Pauline Christianity (1990); E. P. Sanders, Paul (1991); B. Chilton, Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography (2004); J. Murphy-O'Connor, Paul: His Story (2004); G. Wills, What Paul Meant (2006).

Ancient Christian preacher and teacher; along with the Apostle Peter, one of the foremost leaders of the early Christian Church. Paul, originally called Saul, was at first an enemy and persecutor of the early Christians. As he rode to Damascus one day, seeking to suppress the Christians there, a strong light from heaven blinded him, and God spoke to him; after this experience, Saul became a Christian. Going by the Greek name Paul, he spent the rest of his life bringing the gospel to the peoples of the ancient world. The New Testament includes his many epistles (letters) to the early Christian communities.

IN BRIEF: adj. - Relating to one of the Apostles or his doctrines.

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