Paul the Apostle was an early Christian missionary and writer whose letters form a major part of the New Testament. After a conversion experience he travelled through the eastern Mediterranean, founded and advised communities, argued for the inclusion of Gentiles and was traditionally believed to have died in Rome under Nero.
Paul the Apostle was born in Tarsus and died in Rome. Paul’s surviving letters address disputes over law, faith, communal discipline and the meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection; their circulation among early churches made him one of the most influential interpreters of Christianity.
In Steven Pressfield’s A Man at Arms, in AD 55, within Roman Judaea during the reign of Nero, the veteran mercenary Telamon accepts an imperial commission to intercept a letter associated with Paul the Apostle and the expanding Christian movement. Paul the Apostle is treated fictionally in Doug Peterson’s Fire in the Desert, Jeanne Blanchet’s Man at the Cross Road, Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, M.C. Scott’s Rome: The Coming of the King, M.C. Scott’s Rome: The Emperor’s Spy, and Angela Hunt’s The Sisters of Corinth.