Apostle of Doom

Journal

Engraved portrait of Paul of Tarsus, bearded, in a robe, holding a Roman short sword (gladius) and a scroll before a cross, mirrored, in limestone duotone

ΣΑΥΛΟΣ

The Man

Saul of Tarsus, from persecutor of the first believers to self-appointed apostle, and the mind behind the change.

  1. Profile

    Who was Paul of Tarsus?

    A Pharisee from Cilicia who hunted the first followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, then claimed to be their apostle. What the sources allow us to know about the man.

    Part 1 of 2

  2. Profile

    Tarsus, and a persona for every audience

    The city that formed him, and the habit that defined him: a Jew to the Jews and a Greek to the Greeks, as the audience required.

    Part 2 of 2

  3. The Roman

    The Roman: name and tongue

    Saul became Paulus in the house of a Roman governor, and spoke Greek to officers and Hebrew to crowds: the first half of the Roman in Paul.

    Part 1 of 2

  4. The Roman

    The citizenship and the appeal to Caesar

    Paul's claim to Roman citizenship and his appeal to Caesar carried him to Rome. What the claims rest on, and what they reveal about the man.

    Part 2 of 2

  5. The vision

    Saul the persecutor

    Acts records that Saul dragged men and women to prison and consented to the killing of Stephen. The Jewish tradition has a name for that hatred.

    Part 1 of 5

  6. The vision

    The Damascus road: one vision, three stories

    Paul's authority rests on a single experience outside Damascus. The only narrative source tells it three times and cannot keep its details straight.

    Part 2 of 5

  7. The vision

    The three accounts compared

    Luke tells the vision three times. Set side by side, the accounts disagree on what the companions saw and heard, and on what Paul was told.

    Part 3 of 5

  8. The vision

    A self-appointed apostle

    Barnabas vouched for him, and Paul at once named himself an apostle and preached a gospel he admitted was his own.

    Part 4 of 5

  9. The vision

    Curses for dissenters, and the break with Barnabas

    The self-appointed apostle answered disagreement with curses, and parted from Barnabas, the one man who had vouched for him in Jerusalem.

    Part 5 of 5

  10. The purse

    The purse: the collection for Islamicjerusalem

    Paul's letters say more about money than about the life of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. The trade, the wages, the great collection, the suspicion at Corinth, and the governor who waited for a bribe.

  11. The mind

    The persecutor and his guilt

    A persecutor who began to see visions, and never stopped fighting his own past. What identity theory and psychoanalysis suggest.

    Part 1 of 2

  12. The mind

    Ego, epilepsy and narcissism

    Ego inflation, religious psychosis, pathological narcissism and temporal lobe epilepsy: the clinical readings, and why they leave the Islamic verdict unchanged.

    Part 2 of 2

  13. The character

    Perjury, curses and the whited wall

    What Paul's own letters add to the record of his conduct beyond the counts: a lawyer's verdict on the Temple vow, the wish of mutilation, the whited wall, the Jews as enemies of all men, and money.

    Part 1 of 4

  14. The character

    Women, slaves, Caesar and the witnesses of conscience

    The order Paul and his school prescribed for women, for slaves and for the subjects of Caesar, set before the witnesses of conscience.

    Part 2 of 4

  15. The character

    The flesh: licence, lust and the war within

    What Paul confessed of his own body, the catalogues of lust he could not leave alone, and the doctrine that all things are lawful.

    Part 3 of 4

  16. The character

    The fruit at Corinth

    Paul's war with the flesh bore fruit at Corinth, and the fruit condemned the teaching. The Islamic measure offers what his doctrine could not.

    Part 4 of 4