[9] For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age,[8][10] and he also founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD.

According to the Acts, Paul lived as a Pharisee and participated in the persecution of early disciples of Jesus, possibly Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity,[12] in the area of Jerusalem, before his conversion.

[14] At midday, a light brighter than the sun shone around both him and those with him, causing all to fall to the ground, with the risen Christ verbally addressing Paul regarding his persecution in a vision.

[18] He made three missionary journeys to spread the Christian message to non-Jewish communities in Asia Minor, the Greek provinces of Achaia, Macedonia, and Cyprus, as well as Judea and Syria, as narrated in the Acts.

[55] Tarsus was of the larger centers of trade on the Mediterranean coast and renowned for its academy, it had been among the most influential cities in Asia Minor since the time of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC.

Although modern scholarship accepts that Paul was educated under the supervision of Gamaliel in Jerusalem,[57] he was not preparing to become a scholar of Jewish law, and probably never had any contact with the Hillelite school.

[117] Antioch served as a major Christian home base for Paul's early missionary activities,[4] and he remained there for "a long time with the disciples"[118] at the conclusion of his first journey.

However, Acts goes on to recount how Paul was warned by James and the elders that he was gaining a reputation for being against the Law, saying, "they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs.

[187] Acts recounts that on the way to Rome for his appeal as a Roman citizen to Caesar, Paul was shipwrecked on Melita, which is present-day Malta,[188] where the islanders showed him "unusual kindness" and where he was met by Publius.

[2] Pope Clement I writes in his Epistle to the Corinthians that after Paul "had borne his testimony before the rulers", he "departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.

Jerome interpreted the Second Epistle to Timothy to indicate that 'Paul was dismissed by Nero' (Paulum a Nerone dimissum) 'that the gospel of Christ might be preached also in the West'; but 'in the fourteenth year of Nero' (quarto decimo Neronis anno) 'on the same day with Peter, [Paul] was beheaded at Rome for Christ's sake and was buried in the Ostian way, the thirty-seventh year after our Lord's passion' (anno post passionem Domini tricesimo septimo).

[211] According to the Liber Pontificalis, Paul's body was buried outside the walls of Rome, at the second mile on the Via Ostiensis, on the estate owned by a Christian woman named Lucina.

[217][218] In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI announced that radiocarbon dating of bone fragments found in the sarcophagus indicated they were from the 1st or 2nd century, aligning with the traditional timeline of Paul's life.

[219][220] However, Ulderico Santamaria, the head of the Vatican Museums' diagnostics laboratory and a Professor with expertise in Analytical Chemistry and Materials Engineering at Tuscia University, urged caution, noting that the dating neither confirms nor invalidates the relics' traditional assignment to St.

After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.Commenting on this passage, Raymond Brown writes that while it "does not explicitly say" that Paul was martyred in Rome, "such a martyrdom is the most reasonable interpretation".

Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, writes that Pope Vitalian in 665 gave Paul's relics (including a cross made from his prison chains) from the crypts of Lucina to King Oswy of Northumbria, northern Britain.

In the Acts of Paul[243] he is described as "A man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked".

Paul as described in the Acts of the Apostles is much more interested in factual history, less in theology; ideas such as justification by faith are absent as are references to the Spirit, according to Maccoby.

Paul's gospel, like those of others, also included (5) the admonition to live by the highest moral standard: "May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ".

[297][298][299][300][note 10] "Dying for our sins" refers to the problem of gentile Torah-observers, who, despite their faithfulness, cannot fully observe commandments, including circumcision, and are therefore 'sinners', excluded from God's covenant.

[317] Paul is critical both theologically and empirically of claims of moral or lineal superiority[318] of Jews while conversely strongly sustaining the notion of a special place for the Children of Israel.

[321] According to Hurtado, "Paul saw himself as what Munck called a salvation-historical figure in his own right," who was "personally and singularly deputized by God to bring about the predicted ingathering (the "fullness") of the nations.

Wright also contends that performing Christian works is not insignificant but rather proof of having attained the redemption of Jesus Christ by grace (free gift received by faith).

[329] Paul expected that Christians who had died in the meantime would be resurrected to share in God's kingdom, and he believed that the saved would be transformed, assuming heavenly, imperishable bodies.

These women include Miriam, Aaron and Moses' sister,[343] Deborah,[344] the prophet Isaiah's wife,[345] and Huldah, the one who interpreted the Book of the Law discovered in the temple during the days of Josiah.

[342] Kirk's third example of a more inclusive view is Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.In pronouncing an end within the church to the divisions which are common in the world around it, he concludes by highlighting the fact that "there were New Testament women who taught and had authority in the early churches, that this teaching and authority was sanctioned by Paul, and that Paul himself offers a theological paradigm within which overcoming the subjugation of women is an anticipated outcome".

[377][378] Augustine's foundational work on the gospel as a gift (grace), on morality as life in the Spirit, on predestination, and on original sin all derives from Paul, especially Romans.

[380] Visit any church service, Roman Catholic, Protestant or Greek Orthodox, and it is the apostle Paul and his ideas that are central – in the hymns, the creeds, the sermons, the invocation and benediction, and of course, the rituals of baptism and the Holy Communion or Mass.

He has featured as the key to building barriers (e.g. Heinrich Graetz and Martin Buber) or bridges (e.g. Isaac Mayer Wise and Claude G. Montefiore) in interfaith relations,[388] as part of an intra-Jewish debate about what constitutes Jewish authenticity (e.g. Joseph Klausner and Hans Joachim Schoeps),[389] and on occasion as a dialogical partner (e.g. Richard L. Rubenstein and Daniel Boyarin).

'[391] He features in an oratorio (by Felix Mendelssohn), a painting (by Ludwig Meidner) and a play (by Franz Werfel),[392] and there have been several novels about Paul (by Shalom Asch and Samuel Sandmel).