Saint Paul

Saint Paul, also called Saul in Hebrew (Acts 713), was a leader of the early Christian movement and was instrumental in its spread throughout the GrecoRoman world in the years after Christ's death. He was born in Tarsus of Cilicia in Anatolia, probably between AD 1 and 10. Thirteen New Testament letters have been attributed to him, many of which show him adjusting Jewish ideas and traditions to new circumstances and measuring Old Testament laws by their relevance to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Among these are the so-called Pastoral Letters, including those to Timothy and Titus. The Book of Acts portrays Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles and the most prominent early Christian leader next to Saint Peter (Saldarini, 1993, online edition).

Paul was born a Jew and trained to be a Pharisee, or a learned and strict observer of religious law. The New Testament records that he actively tried to suppress the early Christian movement through persecution (Gal. 1:1314) until he was converted to Christianity by a visionary encounter with the risen Jesus while on the road to Damascus about AD 36 (Gal. 1:1516; Acts 9:131; 22; 26). Because of this vision, Paul held that he, too, had met Jesus and was therefore qualified to be called an Apostle (1 Cor. 9:1). In the Bible, "apostle" is a title conferred on one sent with a message. The term is applied primarily to the original Twelve called by Jesus to accompany him during his ministry (Matt. 10:24; Mark 3:1619; Luke 6

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represent a "faded Paulinism." The issue is whether the letters have a Pauline authorship or not (Oden 10). These letters were traditionally accepted as Pauline until the modern period, when scholars began questioning this accepted view. In the nineteenth century, the authorship was questioned by several scholars, beginning with Baur in 1835 (Hawthorne, Merdin, and Reid 658-659). Modern critics offer four reasons why these letters are not Pauline in authorship: 1) The letters do not fit easily into the chronology of Acts. 2) The complexity of the church organization indicated in the letters seems later than would have been the case at the death of Paul, and it is argued that the forms of Gnosticism fought by the letters did not appear until after Paul's death. 3) There are certain noticeable vocabulary and style differences between these letters and those known to have been written by Paul. 4) Some believe that certain doctrines found in the Pastoral Letters are inconsistent with doctrines in other letters by Paul. This makes some believe that a Paulist living in the early second century wrote the letters (Oden 11-12). Oden, however, offers arguments why these reasons do not prove that these letters were n

Category: Philosophy - S