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Geography relevant to Paul's life, stretching from Jerusalem to Rome. The two main sources of information that give access to the earliest segments of Paul's career are the Acts of the Apostles and the autobiographical elements of Paul's letters to the early Christian communities. [44] Paul was likely born between the years of 5 BC and 5 AD. [49]
Paul's influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than that of any other New Testament author. [169] According to the New Testament, Saul of Tarsus first persecuted the early Jewish Christians, but then converted. He adopted the name Paul and started proselytizing among the Gentiles, calling himself "Apostle to the Gentiles."
Thessalonica, the major northern Greek city where it is believed Christianity was founded by Paul, thus an Apostolic See, and the surrounding regions of Macedonia, Thrace, and Epirus, which also extend into the neighboring Balkan states of Albania and Bulgaria, were early centers of Christianity.
[35] [36] The letters of the Apostle Paul sent to the early Christian communities were circulating in collected form by the end of the first century. [37] The codex, the ancestor of modern books, was used by first century Christians, but the Egyptian church likely invented the papyrus codex during the next decades. [38]
Paul's "Road to Damascus" conversion to "Apostle to the Gentiles" is first recorded in Acts 9:13–16, cf. Gal 1:11–24; Peter baptizes the Roman Centurion Cornelius, who is traditionally considered the first Gentile convert to Christianity ; The Antioch church is founded, where the term Christian was first used
It was the form of Christianity practiced in Rome that exercised the uniquely dominant influence over the development of orthodoxy [152] and acquired the majority of converts over time. This was largely due to the greater resources available to the Christians in Rome and due to the conversion to Christianity of the Roman Emperor Constantine I .
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St. Paul, whose views became dominant in early Christianity, made the body into a consecrated space, a point of mediation between the individual and the divine. Paul's over-riding sense that gender—rather than status or power or wealth or position—was the prime determinant in the propriety of the sex act was momentous.