Paul — the most travelled missionary in history

He was born Saul of Tarsus, around AD 5, in a prosperous Hellenistic city in Cilicia. He held Roman citizenship by birth — a rare and valuable status that would later save his life more than once — and he was trained in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, the most respected rabbi of the era (Acts 22:3).

By his own account he was "advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers" (Galatians 1:14). He was on a fast track.

He first appears in the New Testament holding coats.

The persecutor

"And Saul approved of his execution" (Acts 8:1). The witnesses at Stephen's stoning laid their garments at his feet.

What followed was systematic. He "was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison" (Acts 8:3). The verb Luke uses, lymainomai, is used elsewhere of a wild animal mauling a body.

He later described himself without softening it: "I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it" (Galatians 1:13). And, decades on: "I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God" (1 Corinthians 15:9).

He never got over it. It is worth noticing that he also never let it disqualify him.

The Damascus road

He was travelling to Damascus with arrest warrants when a light stopped him and a voice said: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"

He asked who was speaking. The answer: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:4-5).

Two things in that exchange shaped everything Paul later wrote. First, the voice identified persecution of the church as persecution of Christ himself — the seed of his entire theology of the body of Christ. Second, he had been utterly certain he was serving God, and he had been utterly wrong.

He was blind for three days. Then a believer named Ananias — who argued with God about the assignment, reasonably — came and laid hands on him.

Paul grounded his whole apostolic authority in this: "I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12).

The three journeys

First (c. AD 46–48). Sent out from Antioch with Barnabas. Cyprus, then across to southern Galatia — Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. At Lystra he was stoned and dragged out of the city and left for dead. He got up and went back in (Acts 14:19-20).

Second (c. AD 49–52). Blocked from Asia and Bithynia, he received the vision of a Macedonian man saying "come over and help us" (Acts 16:9) — and crossed into Europe. Philippi, where he was flogged and imprisoned and sang hymns at midnight. Thessalonica. Athens, where he preached at the Areopagus and quoted their own poets back to them. Then eighteen months in Corinth.

Third (c. AD 53–57). Nearly three years in Ephesus, the longest he stayed anywhere — long enough that "all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord" (Acts 19:10) and the local silversmiths rioted because the idol trade was collapsing. From this period come 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans.

The estimated total distance is around 16,000 kilometres, largely on foot and by coastal ship, in a world with no maps as we know them and no reliable timetables.

The strategy

Paul was not wandering. Look at where he stopped.

Urban centres on trade routes. Philippi was a Roman colony on the Via Egnatia. Corinth controlled the isthmus. Ephesus was Asia's great port. Plant in a hub and the message travels outward on commerce without you.

Synagogue first. In every city he began with the Jewish community — people who already had the Scriptures and the categories — and with the Gentile God-fearers attached to it, who converted in large numbers.

Plant and leave. He appointed local elders and moved on (Acts 14:23). He was building something that would outlive his presence, and it did.

Unreached ground. "I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named" (Romans 15:20).

Self-supporting. He made tents (Acts 18:3) rather than burden new churches, though he argued elsewhere that he had every right to be supported.

The cost, listed by the man himself

In 2 Corinthians, defending his ministry against polished rivals, Paul produces what may be the strangest résumé ever written:

Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.— 2 Corinthians 11:24-28

The "forty less one" was the Jewish limit — thirty-nine lashes, applied to leave a margin against accidentally exceeding the law. He received it five times, and each was potentially fatal.

He offers this as his credentials. His opponents were boasting about eloquence and letters of recommendation. Paul lists the beatings.

Arrest, appeal, and Rome

Arrested in Jerusalem after a riot in the temple (Acts 21), Paul was held two years in Caesarea while governors stalled. Facing transfer back to Jerusalem, where an ambush was waiting, he used his citizenship: "I appeal to Caesar" (Acts 25:11).

The voyage to Rome ended in a fourteen-day storm and shipwreck on Malta — Acts 27 is one of the most detailed accounts of ancient seafaring that survives from antiquity, and specialists have noted its technical accuracy about rigging, soundings and anchoring.

He spent at least two years in Rome under house arrest, in his own rented quarters, chained to a rotating guard. Luke ends Acts there, with Paul "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance" (Acts 28:31).

From that confinement came Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon — the letters with the most about joy, unity and the cosmic scope of Christ. The chain is mentioned; it is never the subject.

The end

Early tradition (Clement, Eusebius, Tertullian) holds that Paul was released, travelled further — possibly to Spain, which he had planned (Romans 15:24) — was rearrested during Nero's persecution, and beheaded on the Ostian Way outside Rome, around AD 64–67. As a Roman citizen he could not lawfully be crucified.

2 Timothy reads like a man who knows. It is his last surviving letter, written in a cold cell, and he asks Timothy to bring his cloak and his books (2 Timothy 4:13). Most of his colleagues have left. Only Luke is with him.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.— 2 Timothy 4:6-7

The drink offering was the last element of a temple sacrifice, poured out when everything else had been given.

What he left

Thirteen letters — around a quarter of the New Testament. Churches across Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. A theology of grace that would ignite the Reformation fifteen centuries later when a German monk read Romans 1:17 and could not sleep.

And a sentence that explains the whole life: "But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus" (Acts 20:24).

He was, by every worldly measure, a failure: homeless, beaten, imprisoned, executed. And there is no one, apart from Jesus himself, who has more decisively shaped the last two thousand years.