About St. Paul
St. Paul, the great Christian missionary, was born perhaps in 10
CE, in the Cilician city of T
arsus.
His family was Jewish and from them he inherited Roman citizenship.
St. Paul was privileged to have been born a Roman citizen at a time
when it was not yet a universal right for people in the empire.
Initially confined to freeborn natives of the city itself, as Roman
control was extended throughout Italy and then to the lands
bordering the Mediterranean and beyond, certain individuals and
communities were given this right. At the time of St. Paul's
ancestors, one way of attaining to Roman citizenship was serving in
the Roman army for twenty-five years. However, because of sabbath
and Mosaic food prescriptions this profession would not have been
normally possible for a Jew.
The second way by which Roman citizenship could be gained was
slavery. It was known that during the two centuries preceding St.
Paul's time, thousands of people were deported from the eastern
Levant to Italy and made slaves. In the course of time some of these
were able to distinguish themselves by their skill and profession
and were either freed by their masters or bought their freedom and
thus were given Roman citizenship. A remote ancestor of St. Paul,
after obtaining
this citizenship, seems to have returned to his native city Tarsus
and reestablished the family business. Neither Acts nor his letters
give enough information about St. Paul's ancestors or parents. He is
known to have had a married sister in Jerusalem and a nephew (Acts
23: 16). From one of his letters we learn that he had some distant
relatives (Rom 16:7, 11, 21).
The most important privilege that Roman citizenship conferred on a
subject was that he enjoyed legal protection and could not be
scourged and had the right of appeal to the emperor in person, hence
St. Paul's journey to Rome to appeal to Caesar. It is thought that
during the floggings he endured (2 Cor 11 :25), the Apostle may have
not revealed his citizenship because of the fact that he wished to
follow Christ in his suffering. Even if they were condemned to
death, Roman citizens could not be crucified. In the course of time,
however, it seems that the avaricious government officials began
selling this right as admitted by the cohort commander Claudius
Lysias to St. Paul: 'acquired this citizenship for a large sum of
money' (Acts 22:28). A citizen's responsibilities included the
performance of military service, from which Jews were exempted on
religious grounds such as sabbath and kosher food.
There are several theories about why the Apostle chose the name by
which he is known today. St. Paul's cognomen, 'Paulus' the name by
which he was known, was probably chosen because of its similarity to
his Hebrew name 'Saul'; as it means 'small' it might also have been
an allusion to his size. New citizens would take on the first two
names, the praenomen and nomen, of the official granting their
admission. Thus, 'St. Paul' might have also been the name of the
patron of that unknown ancestor who granted the latter Roman
citizenship. By the time of the early empire,
when
St. Paul was born, the use of two names seems to have been
acceptable, at any rate in the New Testament, thus Judas called
Barsabbas (Acts 15:22) etc. The Apostle must have had a second name
which is not mentioned. Whatever the reason for choosing it, 'St.
Paul' was a rare name even among Gentiles. It has also been
suggested that the Apostle may have chosen the name after his first
Gentile convert known by name, Sergius Paulus in Cyprus. St. Paul
would probably have carried a birth registration certificate for
identification purposes when traveling. The information of
citizenship was included in the birth registers whose authorized
copy could be obtained to be displayed when questioned by
authorities. From the various references to his Roman citizenship in
Acts, it is clear that St. Paul valued this privilege which
certainly helped him at times of trouble.
Acts and his letters make it clear that St. Paul worked to support
himself and those who were with him. This was a period when boys
usually learnt their craft from their fathers, which was often the
family's business. The nature of his work is clearly stated as tent
making when he stayed with Aquila and Priscilla: 'and, because he
practiced the same trade, stayed with them and worked; for they were
tentmakers by trade' (Acts 18:3). Given St. Paul's rabbinical
background there is nothing extraordinary about this; Jewish sources
indicate that rabbis were expected to work and not to profit from
their study and interpretation of the Torah. This does appear to
been the case and there are several references to working hands. In
his address to the elders of Ephesus the Apostle
reminds them of this, saying 'these very hands have served my needs'
(Acts 20:34); also when he says 'we toil, working with our hands' (1
Cor 4: 12) or 'nor did we eat food received free from anyone. On the
contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not
to burden any of you" (2 Thes 3:8).
These remarks also answer the questions about financial sources of
the Apostle's missionary journeys. In spite of the gifts he seems to
have received from Christian communities for which he expresses his
gratitude, most of the time he relied on his own resources, a fact
which is often hinted at in his letters and clearly expressed in the
one addressed to the Philippians. 'I find myself, to be
self-sufficient...still, it was kind of you to share in my distress'
(Phil 4: 11,16).
It is possible that St. Paul's family had made their money equipping
the Roman legionaries, who used very large tents, made of leather
panels stretched together so that rain water would run off. The
Roman legions stationed in Syria may not have required leather tents
but used the traditional goat-hair tents similar to those of the
present day nomads. These are made of the rough cloth manufactured
from goat's hair, which in the past was known as cilicium, and took
its name from Cilicia. Tent making might well have embraced not only
the manufacture and the repair of these large, military tents, but
also a range of related leather and woven goods. Apart from military
tents, there would have been considerable demand for awnings, booths
and canopies from vendors at market places and elsewhere.
Since there were many Roman legions based on the upper Euphrates and
in Syria tent making was perhaps a very profitable profession,
considering the flourishing animal husbandry in the region since
early antiquity. Within the family and Jewish community he was
called Saul, Paul being the
latinized form he used when speaking Greek; this he did well and
idiomatically, as befitted one who had grown up in a cosmopolitan
and largely Greek city. He would probably also have spoken Aramaic,
the language of Palestine and the whole Near East, where he spent
fairly extended periods. As he had a strict Jewish upbringing, which
was followed by study in Jerusalem where he trained to be a rabbi,
he would have known Hebrew too. In the Jewish Diaspora he dwelled on
his Jewish background. Elsewhere, in conversing with Greeks he spoke
their native tongue and in the world of Romans he would emphasize
his Roman citizenship.
If St. Paul's family were not members of the Pharisees, then at some
stage he became one; this was a sect that observed strict ritual
purity and adherence to Mosaic law. Its members thought that they
alone could interpret the Torah correctly and felt their
responsibility to teach other Jews the ways of living righteously.
Saul, the name chosen for him, was the name of the first king of the
Jews about a millennium before. The Pharisees and other such Jewish
sects regarded the Christian movement as a threat and so it is as a
persecutor of the Christians and witness to the death of St.
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, that St. Paul first appears in
Acts.
The only available physical information about the Apostle comes from
the apocryphal Acts of St. Paul. Here, Onesiphorus, a man of
Iconium, who wants to receive St. Paul in his house, waits on the
'king's highway' coming from Lystra, for 'a man of little stature,
thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of
body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of
grace: for sometimes he appeared like a man, and sometimes he had
the face of an angel', his description by Titus whom St. Paul had
sent before him to the city to announce his arrival. The fact that
the
commander of the soldiers who arrested St. Paul in Jerusalem thought
that his prisoner may have been 'the Egyptian' they were looking for
(Acts 21 :38), may imply that the Apostle had a wheat-colored
complexion. The Apostle himself may have been conscious of his
insignificant physical look because he admits that this could be
used against him by his enemies (2 Cor 10: 10). The 'short dark
hair, domed brow and black, pointed beard' became the distinct
features of his physiognomy in Byzantine art.
St. Paul is not included among the Twelve Apostles, but regarded as
the Thirteenth Apostle. By the sixth century he replaced St.
Matthias, who had taken the place of the traitor Judas Iscariot
after the latter's death (Acts 1 :26). Byzantine iconography usually
depicted the Apostle looking to his right, with the book of his
letters in his left hand, garbed in a dark green or dark blue tunic
on which he wears an open dark red cloak. As is well known, St. Paul
was converted to Christianity after a vision of the risen Christ
appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Blinded, he was led to
Damascus and there, after three days of fasting and praying, he
recovered his sight, was filled with the Holy Spirit and then
baptized (Acts 9:3-19; 22:6-16; 26:12-18). There have been
innumerable attempts by theologians and others to understand and
explain precisely what happened at this turning point in his life.
All that can be said briefly, is that St. Paul's theology should
perhaps be traced to his experience of conversion. He claimed to
have received his gospel 'through a revelation of Jesus Christ'
(Gall: 12); this in turn led to his proclamation of salvation
through the reconciling grace of God; thus the death of Christ for
the atonement of sins was God reconciling the world to himself
through Christ.
In whichever way St. Paul's vision and conversion are understood, it
is clear, that like the prophets of the Old Testament, he saw
himself as chosen by God for a specific task, namely, to be an
apostle (messenger of the church) to Gentiles. For him the Christian
message, that Christ died to atone for the sins of man and for the
salvation of man, was resurrected and ascended to heaven, was both
the fulfillment of Jewish messianic hopes and the basis for a united
humanity; love, reconciliation and salvation were central themes of
his theology. This clear message of the Apostle may have been the
reason why he did not became an object of a separate Christian cult,
such as that of St. John in Ephesus, St. Barnabas in Cyprus or St.
Peter in Antioch.
After his conversion, there followed a period of solitude in Arabia,
a word which is probably to be understood as somewhere in Syria,
before he returned to Damascus, where he spent three years preaching
the doctrine of the crucified and risen Christ. This antagonized the
Jews of Damascus. 'But his disciples took him one night and let him
down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket' (Acts
9:25). He returned to Jerusalem where he met St. Peter and James,
the brother of Christ, and he was then sent as an apostle to his
native city of Tarsus.
He was subsequently fetched and brought to Antioch on Orontes by St.
Barnabas to help him there. At Antioch, the converts included many
Gentiles, a situation which ultimately led to a crisis from which
St. Paul emerged as the advocate of Gentile conversion. The
controversy, which lasted several years, had at its heart Jewish
purity laws, which made Jews reluctant to eat with non-Jews. The
latter, not being circumcised or bound by the obligations of Mosaic
dietary observances, were
regarded as impure. As the breaking of bread and the drinking of
wine were central to Christian fellowship, there was clearly an
impasse. The resolution of this, St. Paul's decision to convert
Gentiles, ensured that Christianity did not remain just another
Jewish sect, but in time became a universal religion. From Antioch
on Orontes, in about 47, St. Paul and St. Barnabas set out on their
first main missionary journey to Cyprus and then to Pisidia and
southern Galatia in central Anatolia, returning to Antioch on
Orontes next year by sea from the Pamphylian city of Attaleia by way
of Palestine.
On a second journey, about 49-52 accompanied by Silas - and Timothy
after Lystra - St. Paul traveled through Cilicia to Galatia, then to
Alexandria Troas and on to Greece, once again returning by sea to
Caesarea and from there to Antioch on Orontes, this time by way of
Ephesus. On St. Paul's Third Journey, 53-57, St. Paul again visited
the Galatian cities on his way to Ephesus, where he remained for
about three years. From there he visited Greece to which he returned
again, by way of Alexandria Troas, on finally leaving from Miletos .
His last brief visit to his native land was whilst being taken as a
captive to Rome, when ships were changed at Andriace, port of Myra
in Lycia. The date of most of St. Paul's journeys corresponds to the
reign of the emperor Claudius (41-54) whose rule was known to be
milder and more peaceful than that of his predecessor Gaius Caligula
(37-41) and his successor Nero (54-68). When the latter succeeded
Claudius in 54, St. Paul was on his third journey. It is not known
if he would have been able to carry out his journeys during the
persecutions of Caligula or Nero.
After his third journey, St. Paul went to Jerusalem. There he caused
a riot by the Jews, who thought, mistakenly, that he had broken
Jewish law by taking Gentiles into the Temple. He was arrested, but
as a Roman citizen, was treated fairly. St. Paul was then taken to
Caesarea, where the Roman governor kept him in prison to avoid
problems with the Sanhedrin. When the next governor tried to send
him to the Sanhedrin for trial, St. Paul claimed his right as a
Roman citizen to be put on trial at Rome. He arrived there about 60
and lived under house arrest for two years. The unfinished narrative
of Acts closes with him awaiting trial. The circumstances of St.
Paul's death are not known and there is conflicting evidence.
According to one tradition he made a further missionary journey
before being re-arrested, imprisoned in Rome and sentenced to death.
The most widely accepted view is that he was killed in about 62
during the persecution of Christians in Nero's reign as told in the
apocryphal Acts of St. Paul.
Journeys of St. Paul
About St. Paul
Traveling in St. Paul�s Time
City of St. Paul
Antioch on the Orontes
Seleucia Pieria
First Journey
Ministry in Antioch - Orontes
Second Journey
Third Journey
Arrest and Imprisonment
Journey to Rome
Story of Paul and Thecla
St. Paul's Letters
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