He held the coats while Stephen was stoned — then became the Bible’s greatest missionary. Who really is Paul, the man once called Saul?
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Paul & the Epistles
Who is Paul — and was he really once called Saul?
He wrote almost half the books of the New Testament, carried the gospel across the Roman world, and shaped what the church believes to this day. Yet he began as the church’s fiercest enemy. To understand the New Testament, you have to understand Paul — the man once known as Saul. Let’s look at who he really was, why he seems to have two names, how a persecutor became an apostle, and how his letters came to be written — with a guide to all of them below.
Saul of Tarsus
Long before he was Paul, he was Saul — in Hebrew שָׁאוּל (Sha’ul), meaning ‘asked for’ or ‘prayed for’, the very name of Israel’s first king. He was born in Tarsus, a prosperous city in Cilicia, and by his own account was ‘a Hebrew of the Hebrews’, of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5). He studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, one of the most respected teachers of the age (Acts 22:3), and learned the trade of tentmaking (Acts 18:3).
He was also something less common: a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22:28) — a status that would later protect his life and carry him all the way to Rome. So from the very start he stood in two worlds at once: a devout Jew of Jerusalem, and a citizen of the Roman Empire.
Two Names — Not a New One
It is often said that God changed Saul’s name to Paul when he was converted, the way Abram became Abraham. But that is not quite what happened. Scripture never records a name change for him. He simply had two names all along: Saul, his Hebrew name, and Paul — in Greek Paulos, from the Latin Paulus, meaning ‘small’ or ‘humble’. Many Jews of the Roman world carried both a Hebrew and a Roman name in just this way.
Luke marks the moment the change of usage begins:
“Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost…”Acts 13:9 (KJV)
From that point, as his ministry turns increasingly to the Gentiles, the Roman name ‘Paul’ takes over — the fitting name to carry among Greeks and Romans. It is less a new identity than the right name for a new mission. And there is a quiet beauty in it: the man who called himself ‘the least of the apostles’ went by a name that means ‘small’.
The Road to Damascus
Saul first appears in Scripture holding the coats of those who stoned Stephen, ‘consenting unto his death’ (Acts 7:58; 8:1). He then set out to destroy the young church, ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter’ (Acts 9:1). On the road to Damascus, a light from heaven struck him down, and a voice spoke:
“Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”Acts 9:4 (KJV)
Blinded for three days, then healed and baptised, the great persecutor became the great preacher. The risen Christ had chosen him as ‘a chosen vessel’ to carry His name ‘before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel’ (Acts 9:15). No conversion in history has done more to change the world.
Apostle to the Gentiles
Paul spent the rest of his life on the move — three great missionary journeys and a final voyage to Rome — planting churches across Asia Minor and Greece, preaching first in the synagogue and then to the nations. He worked with his own hands so as not to burden anyone, and endured beatings, shipwreck, prison and hunger (2 Corinthians 11:24–27), yet never stopped writing to the churches he loved. By long tradition he was put to death in Rome under the emperor Nero, having ‘finished my course’ (2 Timothy 4:7).
What Are the Epistles?
An epistle is simply a letter. Paul’s epistles are real letters, written to real churches and individuals facing real problems — division, false teaching, suffering, doubt — and through them the Holy Spirit gave the church much of its deepest teaching.
He usually dictated to a scribe; in one letter the scribe even greets us by name: ‘I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you’ (Romans 16:22). Paul would then take up the pen to add a closing in his own hand as a mark of authenticity — ‘see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand’ (Galatians 6:11). Several were written from prison, which is why Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon are known as the ‘prison epistles’.
Thirteen letters in the New Testament carry Paul’s name. A fourteenth, the letter to the Hebrews, was long bound up with him, but it names no author and its writer remains unknown — one of Scripture’s gentle mysteries.
The Letters of Paul
The thirteen letters that bear Paul’s name, in the order they appear in the New Testament — first the letters to churches, then those to individuals.
And Hebrews? The letter to the Hebrews — on how Christ is greater than all that came before — was traditionally placed with Paul’s letters, and the King James Bible even titles it that way. But the letter itself names no author, and who wrote it is still unknown. It belongs to the whole church, whoever first held the pen.
The man who once tried to stamp out the name of Jesus spent the rest of his life writing it across the world — proof that no one is beyond the reach of grace.