Paul the Jew

Saul, or Paul, of Tarsus is best known for spreading the “good news” of the advent of Jesus, whom he believed was the messianic redeemer, specifically to the gentile communities throughout Asia Minor and the Levant. For this reason, he is often considered the “founder of Christianity.” The following passage from Acts 9 describes a pivotal moment in Paul’s life when, as a result of his visionary encounter with a post-ascension Christ on the road to Damascus, he came to believe in Jesus as the son of God and Messiah. As if to rhetorically emphasize the significance of his acceptance of Jesus as the messianic redeemer, Paul identifies himself as a Pharisee (Philippians 3:4–5) and writes that before his “conversion” to belief in Jesus, he was an active persecutor of the church (Philippians 3:6; Galatians 1:13). Acts 22 recounts Paul’s vision of Jesus instructing him to take his message beyond Jerusalem, where he has been rejected, and on to the gentiles. As a Pharisee, Paul was familiar with Pharisaic teaching, Jewish scriptures, and modes of biblical interpretation, which he employed to great rhetorical effect in his mission to the gentiles. The excerpt from Acts, situated at the end of Paul’s mission to Posidia, illustrates that wherever Jews were, they gathered in synagogues on the Sabbath “to hear the word of the Lord.”

Paul’s letters to various early and newly formed communities of Christ followers are the earliest texts in the New Testament canon and reflect the debates in this early period of what would become Christianity. The Galatians passage below reflects the unsettled questions of the boundaries between Jewish and gentile believers within the early movement of Christ followers.