Paul, Formerly Called Saul

Paul, formerly called Saul, an apostle outside the number of the twelve, was of the tribe of Benjamin and from the town of Gischala in Judea. When the town was taken by the Romans, he moved with his parents to Tarsus in Cilicia. They sent him to Jerusalem to study the law, and he was educated by Gamaliel, a most learned man, whom Luke mentions. But after he had been present at the death of the martyr Stephen, and had received letters from the high priest of the temple to persecute those who believed in Christ, he went on to Damascus. There he was compelled to faith by a revelation, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, and was changed from a persecutor into a chosen vessel. Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, was the first to believe through his preaching, and Paul took his name from him because he had brought him to faith in Christ. Joined by Barnabas, he went through many cities and then returned to Jerusalem, where he was ordained apostle to the Gentiles by Peter, James and John. [a]

Since a full account of his life is given in the Acts of the Apostles, I will say only this. In the twenty-fifth year after our Lord’s passion, that is, the second year of Nero, when Festus succeeded Felix as procurator of Judea, Paul was sent to Rome in chains. He remained for two years in free custody and argued every day with the Jews about the coming of Christ. It ought to be said that at his first defense, since Nero’s power was not yet firmly established and his wickedness had not yet broken out to the degree the histories report of him, Paul was released by Nero, so that the gospel of Christ might be preached in the West as well. He himself writes of this in the second letter to Timothy, at the time when he was about to be put to death, dictating the letter while he was in chains: “At my first defense no one took my part, but all deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear; and I was rescued from the mouth of the lion.” By the lion he clearly means Nero, because of his cruelty. Directly after this he says, “The Lord rescued me from the mouth of the lion,” and again shortly after, “The Lord rescued me from every evil work and saved me for his heavenly kingdom.” For indeed he felt within himself that his martyrdom was near at hand, since in the same letter he announced, “For I am already being offered up, and the time of my departure is at hand.”

Then, in the fourteenth year of Nero, on the same day as Peter, he was beheaded at Rome for Christ’s sake, and he was buried on the Ostian Way, in the twenty-seventh year after our Lord’s passion. He wrote nine letters to seven churches: one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Philippians, one to the Colossians and two to the Thessalonians. Besides these he wrote to his disciples: two to Timothy, one to Titus and one to Philemon.

The letter called the Letter to the Hebrews is not considered his, because it differs from the others in style and language. Instead it is reckoned to be the work of Barnabas, according to Tertullian, or, according to others, of Luke the evangelist or of Clement, afterward bishop of the church at Rome, who, they say, arranged and adorned Paul’s ideas in his own language. Then again, since Paul was writing to Hebrews and was in disrepute among them, he may have left his name out of the greeting for that reason. Being a Hebrew, he wrote in Hebrew, that is, in his own tongue and most fluently, while what had been eloquently written in Hebrew was turned still more eloquently into Greek. This is the reason it seems to differ from Paul’s other letters. Some also read a letter to the Laodiceans, but it is rejected by everyone.