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Paul of Tarsus and Christianity (One Significant Person in Christianity) Essay Example

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Paul of Tarsus and Christianity (One Significant Person in Christianity) Essay Example
| Religious tradition study | HSC studies of religion 1 assessment 2 | | | 10/5/2012 |

Paul of tarsus
Christianity today has over 2.18 billion adherents throughout the world and is well established as the universal, monotheistic religious belief system that has developed since the life, death and resurrection (around 32 AD) of Jesus Christ. However, as Jesus was a Jew, the beginnings of Christianity revolved around the fact that Jesus had adapted the strict rules of Judaism to focus on loving human relationships. This mea (Anon., 2011) (Anon., 2011) (Anon., 2011) (Anon., 2012)nt that the followers of Jesus for the first 100 years after his death were merely a very small section of Judaism and the message of Jesus was confined only to Jewish followers.

Paul of Tarsus was born in Tarsus, the modern day turkey and died in ca. 68BC, he was a faithful Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, tent maker and roman citizen, he was taught law by Gamaliel, one of the best teachers in Jerusalem of his time and wrote thirteen out of the twenty seven books in the new testament of the bible.

Paul of Tarsus, is today considered to be the forefather of Christianity and the “13th Apostle”. He developed the doctrine that would turn Christianity from a small section of Judaism into a worldwide faith that was open to all.

Through analysis of Paul’s life, his journeys and sources such as his Letters in the Bible, it is apparent the significant impact he has made in the development of Christianity; such as challenging the status of Jews as “God’s chosen ones”, developing Christian communities around the Roman Empire and laying foundations in theology.

Paul was born in Tarsus, modern-day Turkey as Saul and worked as a tent-maker. He had the privilege of being a Roman citizen and a Jewish Pharisee, which due to the context of the time influenced Paul to be a persecutor of the “followers of Jesus”, or followers of “the Way” that were on the increase. As he writes in

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