About St. Paul
St. Paul, the great Christian missionary, was born perhaps in 10 CE, in the Cilician city of TAbout St. Paularsus. 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.
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, About St. Paulwhen 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 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.
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.
