Was Paul married? No source says that he had a wife during the years of his letters, and his own words show that he was unmarried when he wrote to the Corinthians, in the mid-50s. Whether he had married earlier, and was a widower or separated by the time of his mission, the sources do not say. One early Christian writer, Clement of Alexandria, believed that Paul had a wife he left at home. The plain facts come first below, then the arguments on each side, and last what the question shows about Paul’s teaching.
What Paul says about himself #
The clearest evidence is in 1 Corinthians, a letter all scholars accept as Paul’s. Answering questions the church had sent him about marriage, he sets himself up as the model for the unmarried.
7θέλω δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους εἶναι ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν· ἀλλὰ ἕκαστος ἴδιον ἔχει χάρισμα ἐκ θεοῦ, ὁ μὲν οὕτως, ὁ δὲ οὕτως. 8Λέγω δὲ τοῖς ἀγάμοις καὶ ταῖς χήραις, καλὸν αὐτοῖς ἐὰν μείνωσιν ὡς κἀγώ·
7For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. 8I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.1
“Even as I” means that at the time of writing Paul had no wife. The word he uses for “the unmarried”, ἄγαμοι (agamoi), covers anyone without a spouse: a man never married, a widower, or a man whose wife had left. The verse does not tell us which he was.
Two chapters later Paul defends his rights as an apostle, and the defence shows that he travelled without a wife.
5μὴ οὐκ ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν ἀδελφὴν γυναῖκα περιάγειν, ὡς καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπόστολοι καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ κυρίου καὶ Κηφᾶς;
5Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?2
He claims the right and says he has not used it: “Nevertheless we have not used this power”.3 Here again the words fit a man who never married and a man who had a wife and left her behind. What the verse rules out is a wife travelling with him, as Peter’s did.
Did Paul have a wife? The arguments #
Some argue that he had married. Jewish custom of the period expected a man to marry, and the Torah’s first command to mankind is “Be fruitful, and multiply”.4 Paul calls himself a Pharisee and says he was more zealous for the traditions of his fathers than men of his own age.5 A further argument rests on Acts 26:10, where Paul tells Agrippa that when the believers were put to death, “I gave my voice against them”. Some read this as a vote cast in the Sanhedrin, and the Talmud records a rule that the court seats no one who has no children.6 If Saul sat on the council, he would have been married and a father.
Clement of Alexandria, writing about 200 CE, took a verse in Philippians, where Paul addresses a “true yokefellow”, as a greeting to his wife. Eusebius preserves the passage: “Paul does not hesitate, in one of his epistles, to greet his wife, whom he did not take about with him, that he might not be inconvenienced in his ministry.”7
Others argue that he never married. Paul’s letters never mention a wife, a son or a daughter. The “yokefellow” of Philippians is addressed in the masculine, γνήσιε σύζυγε (gnēsie syzyge), and most readers since Clement have taken it for a fellow worker.8 The vote of Acts 26:10 is a “pebble” (ψῆφος) and can mean no more than his approval, and Acts never seats him on the council; the question is discussed under Saul the persecutor. Many later church writers held that he was never married.
What can be said is this: in his letters Paul is unmarried, travels without a wife, and wishes that others were as he is. Anything before that is conjecture.
What Paul taught about marriage #
The question matters because Paul made his own state a rule for others. His chapter on marriage opens with a sentence the church has argued over ever since: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman”. He allows marriage as a remedy: “But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn”. And he gives a reason that rests on his own expectation of the end: “But this I say, brethren, the time is short”.9
He ranks the married below the unmarried in devotion to God.
32Θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς ἀμερίμνους εἶναι. ὁ ἄγαμος μεριμνᾷ τὰ τοῦ κυρίου, πῶς ἀρέσῃ τῷ κυρίῳ· 33ὁ δὲ γαμήσας μεριμνᾷ τὰ τοῦ κόσμου, πῶς ἀρέσῃ τῇ γυναικί,
32But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: 33But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.10
The time was not short. Paul’s advice rested on a return of Christ within his own lifetime that never came, as The failed prophet shows. The preference for the single life outlived the prophecy, and the Latin church came to require celibacy of its priests.
The letters written in Paul’s name after his death pull the other way. 1 Timothy, which most scholars do not accept as his, condemns those “Forbidding to marry” and requires that a bishop be “the husband of one wife”.11 The later church needed married overseers and had to correct the Paul of Corinth to get them. How Paul spoke of the body and desire is followed further in The flesh: licence, lust and the war within, and his rules for wives in Women, slaves, Caesar and the witnesses of conscience.
The prophets and marriage #
The Torah, which Paul claimed to keep, begins its account of man with the words “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him”.12 The prophets of Israel married, from Ibrāhīm and Mūsā to Dāwūd. The Qurʾān names this as the way of the messengers.
وَلَقَدۡ أَرۡسَلۡنَا رُسُلًا مِّن قَبۡلِكَ وَجَعَلۡنَا لَهُمۡ أَزۡوَٰجًا وَذُرِّيَّةً
“And We have already sent messengers before you and assigned to them wives and descendants.”13
Of the celibacy that grew up among the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him, the Qurʾān says that it was their own invention:
وَرَهۡبَانِيَّةً ٱبۡتَدَعُوهَا مَا كَتَبۡنَـٰهَا عَلَيۡهِمۡ إِلَّا ٱبۡتِغَآءَ رِضۡوَٰنِ ٱللَّهِ فَمَا رَعَوۡهَا حَقَّ رِعَايَتِهَا
“And monasticism, which they innovated; We did not prescribe it for them except that they did so seeking the approval of Allāh. But they did not observe it with due observance.”14
The Prophet ﷺ made marriage part of his own way. In a hadith that al-Albānī graded ḥasan, ʿĀʾishah reports that he said:
النِّكَاحُ مِنْ سُنَّتِي، فَمَنْ لَمْ يَعْمَلْ بِسُنَّتِي فَلَيْسَ مِنِّي، وَتَزَوَّجُوا، فَإِنِّي مُكَاثِرٌ بِكُمُ الْأُمَمَ
“Marriage is part of my sunnah, and whoever does not act on my sunnah is not of me. Marry, for I will boast of your great numbers before the nations.”15
Set beside this, Paul’s wish that all men were “even as I myself” reaches past personal discipline. A teacher who called the single state better than the married one, because the world was about to end, placed his own expectation above the way of every prophet before him. When the end did not come, the church kept his preference and built an order of unmarried priests on it.
In short #
- Paul was unmarried when he wrote 1 Corinthians, about 54 CE (1 Corinthians 7:7–8).
- Whether he ever had a wife is unknown. Clement of Alexandria thought so; most later church writers thought not.
- No wife travelled with him (1 Corinthians 9:5, 12).
- He taught that the unmarried state was better, because “the time is short”.
The rest of what the sources say about Paul’s family, his sister and his nephew, is in Who was Paul of Tarsus in the Bible?, and short answers to other questions about him are gathered on Questions about Paul of Tarsus.
- 1 Corinthians 7:7–8 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 9:5 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 9:12 (KJV). ↩
- Genesis 1:28 (KJV). ↩
- Philippians 3:5; Galatians 1:14. ↩
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 36b, citing a baraita (Tosefta Sanhedrin 7:3): the court does not seat “a very old person or one who is castrated or one who has no children” (William Davidson Edition, Sefaria). ↩
- Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.30.1, quoting Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.6.53, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 1). ↩
- Philippians 4:3: “And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel” (KJV). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 7:1, 9, 29 (KJV). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 7:32–33 (KJV; Greek from the SBLGNT). ↩
- 1 Timothy 3:2; 4:3 (KJV). On the letters written in Paul’s name, see Two Pauls. ↩
- Genesis 2:18 (KJV). ↩
- Sūrah al-Raʿd 13:38. Qurʾānic verses are rendered after Saheeh International. ↩
- Sūrah al-Ḥadīd 57:27. ↩
- Sunan Ibn Mājah, no. 1846, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, vol. 1, p. 592, from al-Qāsim, from ʿĀʾishah (shamela.ws/book/1198/2449). Al-Albānī grades it ḥasan; the editor notes that the chain is weak because of ʿĪsā ibn Maymūn, but that the hadith has a sound supporting report. ↩