Who was Saul in the Bible? Two men stand out under the name. The first is King Saul, the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, the first king of Israel, whose story fills the first book of Samuel. The second is Saul of Tarsus, also of the tribe of Benjamin, who persecuted the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him and is better known by his Roman name, Paul. They lived about a thousand years apart. The Old Testament also names an Edomite king called Saul and a son of Simeon called Shaul. This page tells the two main Sauls apart, then sets out what the comparison shows.

King Saul: the first king of Israel #

The tribes of Israel asked the prophet Samuel for a king, so that they might be “like all the nations”. Samuel warned them against it, and God gave them Saul. The first book of Samuel introduces him by his family and his height.

An early twentieth-century photograph of Tell el-Ful, the hill north of Jerusalem identified with Gibeah of Saul — Tell el-Ful north of Jerusalem, identified with Gibeah, the home and capital of King Saul (1 Samuel 10:26; 15:34). Photograph from the early twentieth century. Image: Matson Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

2And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.¹

Samuel anointed him, and Saul led Israel against the Ammonites and the Philistines. His reign broke on his disobedience. Told to destroy the Amalekites and all they had, he spared their king and the best of the flocks, and Samuel answered him in words that became a rule of the prophets:

22And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 23For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.²

From then on the story turns to the young David, whom Samuel anointed in Saul’s place. Saul, jealous of him, tried more than once to kill him and hunted him in the wilderness. On the eve of his last battle, with God silent, he went to a woman at Endor who had a familiar spirit and asked her to raise the dead Samuel. The next day the Philistines defeated Israel on Mount Gilboa, and Saul, wounded, “took a sword, and fell upon it”.³ His reign is usually dated to the late eleventh century BCE. The New Testament gives it “by the space of forty years”.

Saul of Tarsus: Paul the apostle #

Saul of Tarsus is the man the church calls Paul the apostle. Acts introduces him at the stoning of Stephen, where the witnesses laid down their clothes “at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul”.⁴ He was born in Tarsus in Cilicia, studied the law in Jerusalem, and by his own account “persecuted the church of God, and wasted it”.⁵ After a vision near Damascus he became the most active missionary of the new faith and wrote the letters that carry his name.

He shared the king’s tribe and name, and he said so himself.

1Λέγω οὖν, μὴ ἀπώσατο ὁ θεὸς τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ; μὴ γένοιτο· καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ Ἰσραηλίτης εἰμί, ἐκ σπέρματος Ἀβραάμ, φυλῆς Βενιαμίν.

1I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.⁶

Acts calls him Saul until Acts 13:9 and Paul from then on. He carried both, a Hebrew name and a Roman one. What each name means is set out in What does the name Paul mean?, and why Acts makes the change where it does in The Roman: name and tongue.

Is Paul the same person as King Saul? #

No. King Saul died about a thousand years before Saul of Tarsus was born. They are two men with one name, from one tribe. Saul of Tarsus is the same person as Paul, and the New Testament never confuses him with the king.

There is one scene in which the two meet on the page. Four verses after Acts first calls him Paul, it gives him a sermon in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, the first of his speeches in Acts, and in it Paul names the king who bore his name.

21κἀκεῖθεν ᾐτήσαντο βασιλέα, καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς τὸν Σαοὺλ υἱὸν Κίς, ἄνδρα ἐκ φυλῆς Βενιαμίν, ἔτη τεσσεράκοντα· 22καὶ μεταστήσας αὐτὸν ἤγειρεν τὸν Δαυὶδ αὐτοῖς εἰς βασιλέα, ᾧ καὶ εἶπεν μαρτυρήσας· Εὗρον Δαυὶδ τὸν τοῦ Ἰεσσαί, ἄνδρα κατὰ τὴν καρδίαν μου, ὃς ποιήσει πάντα τὰ θελήματά μου.

21And afterward they desired a king: and God gave unto them Saul the son of Cis, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, by the space of forty years. 22And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.⁷

Paul passes over the king quickly, and moves to David and to David’s descendant, Jesus. A reader of the first book of Samuel will remember what Paul does not say: why Saul was “removed”.

The two Sauls compared #

	King Saul	Saul of Tarsus (Paul)
Tribe	Benjamin (1 Samuel 9:1–2)	Benjamin (Romans 11:1; Philippians 3:5)
Date	Late eleventh century BCE	First century CE
Call	Anointed by the prophet Samuel	By his own account, by a vision; appointed by no prophet or apostle
Pursued	David, God’s anointed	The followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam
The hidden world	Consulted a medium at Endor	Told of visions, and of a man caught up to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2)
Death	Fell on his sword at Gilboa (1 Samuel 31:4)	Not recorded in the Bible; tradition says beheaded in Rome

The comparison is not the Bible’s own, and it can be pressed too far. Two points in it rest on the texts. Both men pursued those whom God had chosen: the king hunted David, and the young Saul of Acts dragged the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam to prison. And both were judged by the rule Samuel gave the king, that obedience is better than sacrifice.

An aerial view of hills and villages in the north of Israel — The hills of northern Israel. King Saul died in battle on Mount Gilboa, fighting the Philistines (1 Samuel 31:1–6). Image: Samir Smier, Pexels License, via pexels.com.

Ṭālūt: King Saul in the Qurʾān #

The Qurʾān tells the story of the first king of Israel under the name Ṭālūt.

Rugged arid hills under a clear blue sky in Israel — Rugged hills in Israel, the country of Saul, David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17). The Qurʾān tells the story of Ṭālūt, Dāwūd and Jālūt (al-Baqarah 2:246–251). Image: Duc Tinh Ngo, Pexels License, via pexels.com.

وَقَالَ لَهُمۡ نَبِيُّهُمۡ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ قَدۡ بَعَثَ لَكُمۡ طَالُوتَ مَلِكًا ۚ قَالُوٓاْ أَنَّىٰ يَكُونُ لَهُ ٱلۡمُلۡكُ عَلَيۡنَا وَنَحۡنُ أَحَقُّ بِٱلۡمُلۡكِ مِنۡهُ وَلَمۡ يُؤۡتَ سَعَةً مِّنَ ٱلۡمَالِ ۚ قَالَ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ ٱصۡطَفَىٰهُ عَلَيۡكُمۡ وَزَادَهُۥ بَسۡطَةً فِى ٱلۡعِلۡمِ وَٱلۡجِسۡمِ

“And their prophet said to them, ‘Indeed, Allāh has sent to you Saul as a king.’ They said, ‘How can he have kingship over us while we are more worthy of kingship than him and he has not been given any measure of wealth?’ He said, ‘Indeed, Allāh has chosen him over you and has increased him abundantly in knowledge and stature.’”⁸

The Qurʾān’s Ṭālūt is a king chosen by God and given knowledge and stature, which agrees with the tall man of 1 Samuel 9:2. Ibn Kathīr explains why the people objected to him: he was not of the royal tribe.

لأن الملك فيهم كان في سبط يهوذا، ولم يكن هذا من ذلك السبط

“Because kingship among them was in the tribe of Judah, and this man was not of that tribe.”⁹

The verses that follow tell of the army tested at a river, the few who stayed faithful, and the victory over Jālūt, Goliath, at the hand of Dāwūd.¹⁰ The Qurʾān does not name Saul of Tarsus, and none of the Qurʾān’s verses on Ṭālūt concerns him. The two Sauls meet only in their name and their tribe.

Other men named Saul #

Saul of Rehoboth, one of the early kings of Edom (Genesis 36:37–38).
Shaul, son of Simeon, the son “of a Canaanitish woman” (Genesis 46:10), founder of the Shaulites.
Shaul the Levite, of the line of Kohath (1 Chronicles 6:24).

What the name shows #

Saul of Tarsus kept the name of the king of his tribe for half his life and dropped it, in the narrative of Acts, at the moment he stood before a Roman governor. He then preached in a synagogue that God had “removed” the first Saul. He never told his hearers why. The first book of Samuel had already given the reason, in the rule that obedience to God is better than any offering, and that rebellion is like witchcraft. Saul of Tarsus set aside the law of Mūsā that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam kept, and called his own revelation the gospel. By the rule Samuel gave the king, the second Saul fell further than the first, and this site’s judgment of him stands: Paul laʿnat Allāh, the curse of God.

The full case against him begins with Who was Paul of Tarsus in the Bible?, and the charges are set out count by count in The Charges.

1 Samuel 9:2 (KJV). ↩
1 Samuel 15:22–23 (KJV). ↩
1 Samuel 18:10–11; 23:14; 28:7–19; 31:1–6 (KJV). ↩
Acts 7:58 (KJV). ↩
Galatians 1:13 (KJV). The record is set out in Saul the persecutor. ↩
Romans 11:1 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
Acts 13:21–22 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:247. Qurʾānic verses are rendered after Saheeh International, which gives Ṭālūt as “Saul”. ↩
Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, ed. Sāmī al-Salāmah, vol. 1, p. 666, on al-Baqarah 2:247 (shamela.ws/book/8473/715). ↩
Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:249–251. ↩