Paul the Apostle

Paul the Apostle, born Saul of Tarsus around AD 5, was a first-century Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus across the Greco-Roman world. He died around AD 64 or 65. Though he was not one of the Twelve Apostles and did not know Jesus during Jesus’s lifetime, he was a contemporary of Jesus and came to know eyewitnesses such as Peter, John, and James, the brother of Jesus, by the mid-30s AD, only a few years after the crucifixion.

Paul is generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age. From the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD, he founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe and made three missions to bring the Christian message to non-Jewish communities. The main sources for his life are his letters and the Acts of the Apostles, which describe his travels, preaching, and miracles, though they do not agree on every detail.

According to Acts, Paul lived as a Pharisee and took part in the persecution of early disciples of Jesus before his conversion. On the road to Damascus, while on his way to arrest Christians, he saw a bright light, heard Christ speak, was blinded, and was later healed by Ananias. After these events, he was baptized and began at once to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish messiah and the Son of God.

His names reflect the world he moved through. His Jewish name was Saul, perhaps after King Saul, who, like Paul, was of the Tribe of Benjamin. He also bore the Latin name Paulus, meaning “small,” not because of his conversion, but as a second name suited to a Greco-Roman audience. Acts presents the two names as interchangeable, while Paul himself uses “Paul” in his letters. This fit his missionary style: he approached people in language and forms they could understand.

Fourteen of the 27 books in the Christian scriptures have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Seven of the Pauline letters are undisputed by scholars as authentic. Other letters connected with his name are debated or generally regarded as written by followers using his name, while Pauline authorship of Hebrews is almost universally rejected by scholars. Even with these questions, Paul’s letters remain central to theology, worship, and pastoral life in Latin and Protestant traditions in the West, and in Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions in the East.

Paul’s thought has been read in sharply different ways. Christians, especially in the Lutheran tradition, have often understood him as teaching that people are saved through faith rather than by following Jewish law. Others have accused him of corrupting or hijacking Christianity by bringing pagan or Hellenistic themes into the early church. More recently, there has been growing acceptance of Paul as a fundamentally Jewish figure, in line with the original disciples in Jerusalem. His words still matter because they stand close to the earliest Christian communities, carrying the force of argument, conviction, and lived mission.