ABSTRACT
Saul/Gallio Paul was “a man of Tarsus”, “a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia”, and therefore “a citizen of no mean city”. As to why he came to be from Tarsus, Paul was in origin a Jew of the Dispersion. As Greekspeaking Jews, the Jews of the Dispersion read the Scriptures regularly in the Greek translation known as the Septuagint rather than in the Hebrew. In particular Jerome says that Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin and from the town of Gischala in Judea. The Hellenistic and Roman city of Tarsus, which was the city of Paul, is for the most part buried beneath the present town, 20 ft below the surface, and largely inaccessible because of habitation. At Damascus a disciple named Ananias was sent to him in the house of Judas in the street called Straight, and afterward Paul was with the disciples at Damascus for some time.
