June 29th: Feast Day of St Paul

Today is the feast day of St Paul, missionary and writer. 

1. The story goes that Saint Paul was originally known as Saul of Tarsus and that he changed his name to Paul on his conversion. That may not have been the case. His family were Jewish, but also Roman citizens so it would not have been unusual for him to have both a Hebrew name (Saul) and a Latin one (Paul) all along. The author of Acts hints at this with "Saul, who also is called Paul." As a missionary to the Romans, he would have used his Latin name to put them at ease.
2. Saint Paul is patron of missions, theologians and Gentile Christians.
3. Approximately half of the New Testament book of Acts deals with Paul's life and works.
4. Fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul.
5. Seven of these are disputed, however, including the first letter to Timothy which forbids women from teaching men or holding any office in the church. His authentic books acknowledge and praise women who worked alongside him as missionaries, like Phoebe and Junia. So Paul may not have been the misogynist many have taken him to be.
6. The Bible doesn't say much about Paul's early life. We know he was sent to school in Jerusalem, to the Hillel school which was noted for giving its students a balanced education in classical literature, philosophy, and ethics.
7. We also know he was a tent maker by trade, which was how he connected with Priscilla and Aquila, fellow tentmakers who later became fellow missionaries.
8. The Bible doesn't tell us what Saint Paul looked like, but there are several descriptions of him in apocryphal texts. These suggest that he was short in stature, bald (but the little hair he had was red), had a hooked nose, Eyebrows that met in the middle and a ruddy complexion. He may have had a deformity or disability of some kind, because he says in his own writings that he was "abnormally born" and tormented by the effects of that.
9. The Bible does not say when or how Paul died, but again, apocryphal texts have more to say on the matter. According to the Acts of Paul, Nero condemned Paul to death by decapitation. After he was beheaded, his severed head allegedly rebounded three times, and a source of Water sprang up in each spot where it touched the ground, which is how the place earned the name "San Paolo alle Tre Fontane" ("St Paul at the Three Fountains").
10. According to legend, Paul's body was buried outside the walls of Rome, at the second mile on the Via Ostiensis, on the estate owned by a Christian woman named Lucina. In the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine built a church there, which was extended several times by subsequent emperors. The present-day Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls was built there in 1800.