People who search for Paul ask the same plain questions again and again: who he was, where he came from, whether he ever met Jesus, how he died, and whether he founded Christianity. Each answer below is short and rests on Paul’s own letters and on the Acts of the Apostles, the only narrative source for his life. Each links to the article that sets out the full evidence. Claims that missionaries make in his defence are answered separately in Answers to missionary claims. Behind them all is one question: what Paul made of the message of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him.
Who was Paul in the Bible? #
Paul, also called Paul the apostle, Saint Paul or St Paul, was a Jew from Tarsus who first persecuted the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and then took up his cause on his own authority. He appears in the Acts of the Apostles and wrote the letters that carry his name, from Romans to Philemon. Paul is not a book of the Bible himself: thirteen of the New Testament’s letters are attributed to him, and the rest of what we know of his life comes from Acts.
Full evidence: Who was Paul of Tarsus?
Are Saul and Paul the same person? Saul vs Paul: when did Saul become Paul? #
Yes. Acts calls him Saul until the visit to Cyprus, where it says “Saul, who is also called Paul” (Acts 13:9), and Paul from then on. He did not change his name on the road to Damascus: Saul was his Hebrew name and Paul his Roman one. King Saul of the Old Testament was a different man, of the same tribe of Benjamin as Paul, and the Bible names other men Saul too.
Full evidence: The Roman: name and tongue
What does the name Paul mean? #
Paul is the Latin Paulus, “small” or “little”. It is not a Hebrew name, so it has no meaning in Hebrew. His Hebrew name, Shaʾul, means “asked for”. Acts records the Roman name beside the governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, at the moment Paul first meets a Roman official.
Full evidence: The Roman: name and tongue
Where and when was Paul born? What tribe, language and appearance? #
Paul was born in Tarsus in Cilicia (Acts 21:39; 22:3), of the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5). No source gives the year; the usual reckoning places his birth in the first decade of the first century, which would make him about sixty at his death. He wrote in Greek and spoke Hebrew or Aramaic to a Jerusalem crowd (Acts 21:40). For his looks the only early witness is an opponent, who said his “bodily presence is weak” (2 Corinthians 10:10). The detailed portrait of a small, bald, bowlegged man comes from the Acts of Paul, written much later.
Full evidence: Who was Paul of Tarsus?
Was Paul married? #
The sources do not say. When he wrote to Corinth he was not married, and he told the unmarried and widows that it was good to stay as he was (1 Corinthians 7:7–8). He asks whether he has no right to take a believing wife like the other apostles (1 Corinthians 9:5). Whether he had been married earlier, or was a widower, is unknown.
Full evidence: Who was Paul of Tarsus?
Was Paul a Jew or a Gentile? Was he a Pharisee? #
He was a Jew, and a Pharisee. He calls himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews” and, “as to the law, a Pharisee” (Philippians 3:5), and before the council in Jerusalem he says, “I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees” (Acts 23:6). Acts shows him using that claim to split the Sadducees from the Pharisees in the room. Nothing in the sources makes him a Gentile.
Full evidence: Who was Paul of Tarsus?
Was Paul a Roman citizen? #
Acts says so three times (16:37; 22:25–28; 23:27), and builds his appeal to Caesar on it. Paul’s own letters never claim it. He says Roman authorities beat him with rods three times (2 Corinthians 11:25), a punishment that citizens were spared. So the citizenship rests on Acts alone. No source makes him a Roman soldier.
Full evidence: The citizenship and the appeal to Caesar
Was Paul a member of the Sanhedrin? #
Acts never says so. It shows him before the council as a prisoner, addressing it as “a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee” (Acts 23:6). Some readers take his words “I gave my voice against them” when believers were put to death (Acts 26:10) to mean that he had a vote on the council. The Greek speaks of a pebble or vote, and it can equally mean his approval. No source gives him a seat.
Full evidence: Saul the persecutor
Did Paul ever meet Jesus? When did Paul see Jesus? #
Not in his life on earth. Paul claims a single meeting, a vision of the risen Christ that he places after the other apostles had seen him (1 Corinthians 15:8). Acts places it near Damascus and tells it three times with different details. Paul may have lived in the same years as Jesus, but no source puts him in Galilee or at the crucifixion, and Acts shows him as a young man at the stoning of Stephen. Jesus never knew Paul, and Paul never walked with him.
Full evidence: did-paul-ever-meet-jesus and The Damascus road: one vision, three stories
Was Paul one of the twelve apostles or a disciple of Jesus? #
No. He was not one of the Twelve and not a disciple in Jesus’s lifetime. Acts itself sets the test for taking Judas’s place: the man must have been with the disciples “all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” from John’s baptism to the ascension (Acts 1:21–22). Paul does not meet it. He claims the title apostle on the strength of his vision alone, and calls himself an apostle “untimely born” (1 Corinthians 15:8).
Full evidence: A self-appointed apostle
Who taught Paul? Who made him an apostle? #
Paul says no human taught him his gospel: he received it “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11–12). Acts agrees that he studied the law in Jerusalem under Gamaliel (22:3), and that a disciple named Ananias baptised him in Damascus (9:17–18). The apostles in Jerusalem did not appoint him, and Paul insists that they added nothing to him (Galatians 2:6).
Full evidence: A self-appointed apostle
What did Saul do before his conversion? Did Paul persecute or kill Christians? #
He persecuted them. Paul admits he “persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13). Acts first shows him at the stoning of Stephen, guarding the cloaks of the men who killed him and approving of it (Acts 7:58; 8:1), then entering houses to drag men and women to prison (8:3). He later says he voted against the believers when they were put to death (Acts 26:10). Acts never shows him striking a blow himself, but it makes him a party to their deaths.
Full evidence: Saul the persecutor
What happened on the road to Damascus? What caused Paul to stop persecuting and become a missionary? Was he blind? #
Acts says a light from heaven struck him down near Damascus, a voice called him, and he was blind for three days until Ananias laid hands on him (Acts 9:3–18). The three tellings in Acts disagree on what the companions heard and saw. No source gives the year; it was within a few years of the crucifixion. Paul’s own letters never describe a fall or blindness, and he speaks of a calling, not a conversion.
Full evidence: The Damascus road: one vision, three stories and The three accounts compared
How did Paul die? When, where and how old was he? #
No book of the New Testament records Paul’s death. Acts ends with him under house arrest in Rome. The earliest mention is in 1 Clement, written in the 90s, which says only that he “bore his testimony before the rulers” and departed. Later writers, among them Tertullian and Eusebius, say he was beheaded in Rome under Nero, around the year 64 to 67, which would make him about sixty. The beheading is later church tradition.
Full evidence: A death the scriptures never record and The failed prophet
Who was the founder of Christianity? Did Paul create Christianity? #
Christians name Jesus as its founder. The evidence points to Paul as the founder of the religion that came after him. He wrote the earliest books of the New Testament, took the message to the Gentiles, and set out the doctrines that the church still teaches: justification by faith, the atoning death and the divine Son. ʿĪsā ibn Maryam taught no such system. Paul did not invent the word Christian, but he built the faith that the name came to describe.
Full evidence: The church that followed Paul and Seven doctrines: God, the cross and faith
Why was Paul important to Christianity? How did he spread it? #
He carried it out of Judaea. By his own letters and by Acts he founded or visited churches across Asia Minor and Greece and reached Rome, and he wrote to them to settle questions of belief and conduct. Thirteen letters carry his name, and they make up about a quarter of the New Testament. His letters are earlier than any Gospel. That head start is why his reading of the message became the church’s.
Full evidence: How Paul came to own the New Testament
How many times was Paul arrested, and how long did his ministry last? #
Acts records an arrest and beating at Philippi (16:19–40), his arrest in Jerusalem, two years’ custody in Caesarea (24:27), and two years under house arrest in Rome (28:30). Paul himself claims “far more imprisonments” than any rival (2 Corinthians 11:23), and 1 Clement says seven. Acts gives him about two years in Ephesus (19:10) and eighteen months in Corinth (18:11). The sources give no total for his ministry; the usual dating makes it about three decades.
Full evidence: The parting with Barnabas, and open conflict with Peter and The Jerusalem Council
What books of the Bible did Paul write? When did he write his letters? #
Thirteen letters in the New Testament carry Paul’s name: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon. Scholars agree that he wrote seven: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. The rest are disputed. The earliest, 1 Thessalonians, dates to about the year 50. He did not write Acts, which is the work of Luke, and Hebrews is anonymous.
Full evidence: The letters of a man
What did Paul teach? Did Paul believe Jesus was God? #
Paul taught that people are justified by faith and not by the works of the law, that Christ’s death atoned for sin, and that Christ was the Son of God and Lord. Whether he called Jesus God is disputed: the two verses sometimes cited, Romans 9:5 and Titus 2:13, can be translated more than one way, and Titus is among the letters scholars doubt he wrote. His own titles for Jesus in the undisputed letters are Christ, Lord and Son.
Full evidence: Seven doctrines: God, the cross and faith and Paul’s own titles, and the tafsīr of Yā Sīn
Was Paul a real person? Who really was Paul of Tarsus? #
Yes. His letters are among the earliest Christian writings, and Clement of Rome names him within a generation of his death. What is disputed is how far his own account of himself can be trusted, since for the facts of his life he is often the only witness. The case this site makes is that he was a man who made himself an apostle, and that what he built was his own.
Full evidence: Who was Paul of Tarsus? and Perjury, curses and the whited wall
Was Paul a false apostle? Does the Quran mention Paul? #
The Quran does not name Paul. Muslim scholars who examined his teaching, from the ninth century on, judged him the man who corrupted the religion of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. Paul warned against “false apostles” himself (2 Corinthians 11:13), and the answer to whether he was one depends on the test: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam’s own teaching, which Paul never heard from him.
Full evidence: No prophet between me and ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and The early Islamic record
Who was the apostle to the Gentiles? #
Paul. He calls himself “the apostle of the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13) and says the gospel to the uncircumcised was entrusted to him, as the gospel to the circumcised was to Peter (Galatians 2:7–8). The title is his own. The Jerusalem apostles agreed to a division of the field, and Acts shows the arrangement breaking down at Antioch.
Full evidence: The parting with Barnabas, and open conflict with Peter
Is Paul a Jewish name? #
No. Paul is the Latin Paulus, and Acts uses it from the visit to Cyprus on. His Jewish name was Saul, Shaʾul in Hebrew, which is the name of Israel’s first king. Paul was of the same tribe, Benjamin, as King Saul, and that is the usual explanation for the name.
Full evidence: The Roman: name and tongue
What was Paul’s thorn in the flesh? Was he ill? #
Paul does not say. He writes that “a thorn in the flesh” was given to him, “the messenger of Satan to buffet me” (2 Corinthians 12:7), and that he asked three times for it to leave. He tells the Galatians he first preached to them because of “an infirmity of the flesh” and that they would have given him their own eyes (Galatians 4:13–15). From these, readers have guessed at poor eyesight, malaria, a speech defect and epilepsy. None of the guesses can be shown from the text.
Full evidence: Ego, epilepsy and narcissism and The flesh: licence, lust and the war within
Was Paul a homosexual? #
No source says so. The idea comes from guesses about the thorn in the flesh and from his unmarried state, and there is no evidence for it. What he wrote on the subject is another matter: the passages usually cited are Romans 1:26–27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9. The case on this site rests on what he taught and claimed, not on speculation about his private life.
Full evidence: The flesh: licence, lust and the war within
Paul vs Jesus: did they teach the same thing? #
Not by the record. Paul quotes sayings of Jesus on only a few occasions (1 Corinthians 7:10; 9:14; 11:23–25), and his letters, written first, build on his own revelation. The first community of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam’s followers, led by James, ruled against Paul’s gospel. This site’s case is that Paul’s religion is a different religion from that of Jesus.
Full evidence: The Jerusalem Council and James, the brother of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam
What did Paul do wrong? #
The case against him is set out as six counts. Each count has its own articles, with the evidence and its references.
Full evidence: The Charges