The Life and Prayers of Saint Paul the Apostle by Wyatt North Read Free Book Online Page A

author's goal is not to aggrandize Paul and draw a parallel to the life of Christ. These are questions that the reader must ask, and come up with their own answer.
     
    Outside of the canonical sources, we find several apocryphal as well as gnostic texts. The earliest work dedicated to the life of Saint Paul was written between 160 and 190 AD, and is mentioned by the famous 2nd century Christian author Tertullian. It was called the Acts of Paul and comes down to us, in its entirety, only in fragments.
     
    Its main constituent parts, however, were so popular individually that they were often copied and distributed on their own. They are the Acts of Paul and Thecla , and the Martyrdom of Paul . In addition to these two works, the Acts of Paul consist of letters and prayers, as well as several shorter narratives of Paul's preaching and miraculous healings.
     
    Several sources on Paul's life hail from the 4th century. The Acts of Peter and Paul , and the very similar Passion of Peter and Paul , details Paul's journey to Rome and his eventual death there.
     
    Those are the sources that deal directly with the life of Paul the Apostle, although small details can of course be gleaned from other sources as well and those will not be forgotten.
     
    The dedicated seeker of Paul will also find several letters, including a fourth century forgery of the very warm correspondence between Paul and the Stoic philosopher Seneca, and prayers, as well as two travels to Heaven: the Apocalypse of Paul , a Catholic account that appears to have inspired Dante's Inferno , and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul , a Gnostic text.
     
    But for now we will occupy ourselves with the earthly life of Paul the Apostle, that begins with conception and ends, somewhat uncertainly, in death.

The Early Life of Saint Paul
     
     
    Very little is known about the early life of Saint Paul. We do not know exactly when he was born or who his parents were. We do not know of his childhood exploits, or his relationship to his family and teachers. But there is much that we can infer from the little details given, primarily, in the New Testament.
     
    The year of Paul's birth can only be derived from the dating of his letters, through references to historical people and events, and educated guesses about Paul's age when writing them. Most likely, he was born sometime around 3-10 AD. The Bible tells us that he was born in the city of Tarsus.
     
    Tarsus lay, as is stated several times in the Acts of the Apostles , in Cilicia. It was a region of modern Turkey whose cities had been culturally Greek since Alexander the Great took it from the Persian Empire in 333 BC. By the time that Paul was born there, it had been annexed by the Roman Empire, and then largely abandoned again to be ruled by local princes and priests.
     
    Much of Cilicia was considered hostile outback by the Romans, but Tarsus itself was a bustling capital. The city was a prosperous center for textile production, in particular the goat-hair cloth, called Cilicium after the region, that the Romans imported for tent-making.
     
    The Greek geographer Strabo, an older contemporary of Saint Paul, wrote that “the people at Tarsus have devoted themselves so eagerly, not only to philosophy, but also to the whole round of education in general, that they have surpassed Athens, Alexandria, or any other place that can be named where there have been schools and lectures of philosophers.”
     
    But, Strabo also wrote that Tarsus was different from other scholarly cities in that the people of Tarsus tended to complete their education elsewhere, and then rarely go home again. Of this, we shall see, Paul is an excellent example.
     
    The language used in Paul's letters make it clear that Paul spoke Greek on a native level, as might be expected of a man from Tarsus. He read and quoted from the Old Testament in its Greek translation, and used the rhetorical and oratory clichés of the eastern Roman schools. He was clearly at