Paul the Apostle

Paul of Tarsus was a Pharisee and Roman citizen who persecuted the first Christians until, on the road to Damascus, he was converted by a vision of the risen Jesus. For the next thirty years he travelled the eastern Mediterranean founding churches and writing to them, and his letters, the earliest Christian documents we have, were written before the Gospels. Romans is the fullest statement of his theology of grace and faith; the two letters to Corinth answer a quarrelling church and contain the hymn to love; Galatians is the sharpest. Tradition says he was beheaded in Rome under Nero. Augustine and Luther were each converted reading him.