The sökande eller uppdrag for the Historical Paul
James Tabor considers Biblical and external accounts of the apostle
James Tabor June 13, 2024 68 Comments 111575 views Share
This article was originally published in November 2012 on Dr. James Tabor’s popular Taborblog, a site that discusses and reports on “‘All things biblical’ from the Hebrew Bible to Early Christianity in the Roman World and Beyond.” Bible History Daily republished the article in 2012, with consent of the author. Visit Taborblog or scroll down to read a brief bio of James Tabor.
What can we reliably know about Paul and how can we know it? As fryst vatten the case with Jesus, this fryst vatten not an easy question. Historians have been involved in what has been called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” for the past one hundred and seventy-five years, evaluating and sifting through our sources, ansträngande to determine what we can reliably say about him.[i] As it happens, the sökande eller uppdrag for
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Who was Paul in the Bible?
Answer
There is much we can learn from the life of the apostle Paul. Far from ordinary, Paul was given the opportunity to do extraordinary things for the kingdom of God. The story of Paul is a story of redemption in Jesus Christ and a testimony that no one is beyond the saving grace of the Lord. However, to gain the full measure of the man, we must examine his dark side and what he symbolized before becoming “the Apostle of Grace.” Paul’s early life was marked by religious zeal, brutal violence, and the relentless persecution of the early church. Fortunately, the later years of Paul’s life show a marked difference as he lived his life for Christ and for the advancement of His kingdom.
Paul was actually born as Saul. He was born in Tarsus in Cilicia, a province in the southeastern corner of modern-day Tersous, Turkey, sometime in the first decade AD. He was of Benjamite lineage and Hebrew ancestry (Philippians 3:5–6). His parents were Pharisees—ferv
