Why was Saul's name changed to Paul?

Answer 1

It wasn't we just like it more that way. Possibly because Saul played a big part in the persecution of Jesus. In the days that The Bible was only interpreted by the church it could have been used to simplify the story.

AnswerIn his epistles, Paul himself never mentioned having been called Saul. However, the Jewish historian, Josephus, does mention a slightly disreputable character, Saulus, whose story was in some ways similar to the story about Paul in Acts of the Apostles. Some believe that the author of Acts could have used this name to bring to the attention of his readers the apparent similarity of the young man who persecuted the Christians and the historical Saulus.
A:Although it was not uncommon for internation Jews to have two names, one for gentile acquaintances and one for Jews, Paul himself never gives any hint that he was ever known as Saul. Then in Acts of the Apostles, written some decades later, he was invariably referred to as Saul (of Tarsus) until the thirteenth chapter , when he and Barnabas had an encounter with a Jewish false prophet on the island of Cyprus during his first missionary journey. From this point on, Acts tends to refer to him as Paul.

Acts seems to contain some rhetoric against the memory of Paul and the use of the name 'Saul' could arguably have been part of this rhetoric. In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus talked of a riot in Jerusalem, led by a 'Saulus', after the stoning of James, an account which is somewhat parallelled in Acts' account of the stoning of Stephen. Elsewhere, Josephus portrayed this Saulus as a collaborator with the Romans and the Herodians. Thus, without risking a charge of character assassination, Luke could have been implying an ill-deserved history for the otherwise saintly Paul, among the early Christians who knew of the notorious 'Saulus'.