SAINT PAUL'S LIFE

St Paul in his Letters provides us with only a few snippets of biographical information about himself. In Philippians 3:5-6 he mentions how he was 'circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.'

In Galatians 1:13-14 he speaks of the zeal of his earlier life in Judaism, how he was 'violently persecuting the church of God, and was trying to destroy it', being more advanced and more zealous for the traditions of Judaism than most people of his age.

It is from the Acts of the Apostles, a document written long after Paul's life and letters, that we gain other pieces of information about him; for example, that he came from Tarsus in Cicilia (9:30; 11:25; 22:3); or that he had the trade of a tent-maker (18:3); or that he had studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel (22:3).

As an educated Jew brought up in Cilicia, he would have known Hebrew from the synagogue, but his everyday language would have been Greek, in which language he wrote his letters and presumably usually preached. It was not unusual for Jewish teachers, and the later rabbis, to have a trade, and, if tents were usually made from leather at that time, Paul may have been a skilled leather-worker. The Gamaliel who is mentioned in Acts as his Jewish teacher in Jerusalem was the grandfather of the well-known early second century Gamaliel II, but there is some uncertainty  as to whether, or for how long, Paul may have studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel I.

In Galatians 1:17-22 Paul is emphatic that after his conversion he did 'not go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me'; that it was only three years after his conversion that he went to Jerusalem, where he stayed fifteen days and saw from among the apostles Peter (Cephas) and James the brother of the Lord; and that at this point  he was 'still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ.' His previous work of persecution  had been carried out in Damascus rather than Jerusalem (Acts 9:2). It does look as if he was not a well-known figure in Jerusalem - which he would have been if he had had a long period of study there. He is very clear in Galatians that his mandate as an 'apostle' - which is for him a much wider term than just the twelve whom Jesus chose - came directly from the risen Christ, and not through any human mediation.

DATES

For the chronology of Paul's life and ministry we are completely in the realm of guesswork. His conversion (Acts 9, 22, 26) is dated by some scholars to as early as AD 31; and by others to 34 or 37. Most date the First Mission Journey to 46-48, and the so-called 'apostolic council', or meeting with the apostles and elders in Jerusalem (Acts 15), to 48 or 49. This would place the Second Mission Journey between 49 and 52, and the Third Mission Journey somewhere between 53 and 58. Paul's arrest in Jerusalem (Acts 21:33) may have been around 58, with his imprisonment at Caesarea between 58 and 60, and then in Rome between 61 and 63. Some scholars would push back the last several dates, with Paul's Roman imprisonment dated to 58 - 60. It is all conjecture.

THE END OF HIS LIFE

The Acts of the Apostles end with Paul in a two-year house arrest in Rome, though able to preach to those who came to visit him. It is annoying for us that neither Acts, nor the rest of the New Testament, tell us the end of Paul's story. According to tradition he was martyred in Rome during the persecution by Nero after the Fire of Rome and the falsely-alleged 'crimes against humanity' of the Christians. The Fire of Rome took place in 64, although various ancient Christian authorities dated Paul's martyrdom to 67. It was Tertullian in the late second century who first provided the information that his martyrdom was by beheading.