Pa'U (Heb, Pdu', *"Q, a bleating, or yawning; but in 1 Chron, i, 50, Pai, "^"Q, though some copies agree with the reading in Gen. ; Sept. <l>oywp, i. e. chasm ; Yulg. Phau), the capital of Hadar, king of Edom (Gen, xxxvi, 39). The only name that bears any resemblance to it is Phauara, a ruined place in IdumKa mentioned by Seetzcn,
Paul (HarXor, the Greek form of the common Latin name Paulus), originally (see below) Saul (q. v,), the specially appointed '"Apostle to the Gentiles." (In the following treatment of this important character, we adopt, for the most part, the article in Smith's iJict. of the Bible, with important additions from Winer, Kitto, Fairbairn, and other sources.)
I, Preliminary Inquiries. — 1. Original A uthorities. — Nearl}' all the authentic materials for the life of the apostle Paul are contained in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Paulino Epistles, Out of a comparison of these authorities the biographer has to construct his account of the really important period of the apostle's life. The early traditions of the Church appear to have left almost untouched the space of time fur which we possess those sacred and abundant sources of knowl- edge ; and they aim only at supidying a few particulars in the biography beyond the points at which the narra- tive of the Acts begins and terminates.
The inspired histor}' and the Epistles lie side by side, and are to all appearance quite independent of one an- other. It was not the purpose of the historian to write a life of Paul, even as much as the received name of his book would seem to imply. The book called the Acts of the Apostles is an account of the beginnings of the kingdom of Christ on the earth. The large space which the apostle occupies in it is due to the important ])art which ho bore in spreading that kingdom. As to the Epistles, nothing can be plainer than that they were written without reference to the history; and there is no attempt in the canon to combine them with it so as to form what we should call in modern phrase the apostle's " Life and Letters." What amount of agreement and what amount of discrepancy may be observed between these independent authorities is a question of the great- est interest and importance, and one upon which various opinions are entertained. The most adverse and ex- treme criticism is ably represented by Dr. Baur of Til-
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bingeu (Pauliis dei- AjyosfelJesti Christi [Stuttg. 1845]), who finds so much opposition between wliat he holds to be the few authentic Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles that he pronounces the history to be an interested fiction. But his criticism is the very carica- ture of captiousness. We have but to imagine it applied to any history and letters of acknowledged authenticity, and we feel irresistibly how arbitrary' and unliistorical it is. Putting aside this extreme view, it is not to be de- nied that diflculties are to be met with in reconciling completely the Acts and the received Epistles of Paul. What the solutions of such difficulties may be, whether there are any direct contradictions, how far the apparent differences may be due to the purpose of the respective writers, by what arrangement all the facts presented to us may best be dovetailed together — these are the vari- ous questions which have given so much occupation to the critics and expositors of Paul, and upon some of which it seems to be yet impossible to arrive at a de- cisive conclusion. We shall assume the Acts of the Apostles to be a genuine and authentic work of Luke, the companion of Paul, and shall speak of the Epistles at the places which we believe them to occupy in the history.
2. A'ame.— There can be no doubt that the apostle's name, as a Jew, was Saul ; but when or how he received the Koman name Paul, which he bears in the Acts of the Apostles from ch. xiii, 9, which he uses in his Epis- tles, and by which he is called by Peter ("2 Pet. iii, 15), is unknown. It is quite probable that he had borne the name of Paul as a Koman citizen ; and it is no objection to this view that then this name would have appeared first, and that of Saul later (Witsius, Meletem. Lcicl. p. 47). If it is not merely accidental that Luke first calls him Paul in the passage mentioned, the reason may be that the apostle then first commenced his public and separate ministry; and Paul, a Gentile name, was that which the apostle of the Gentiles always oore in Church history (IJaur, Paul. p. 93). Even if the Jews still used the old Jewish name, there was afterwards no occasion for Luke to mention it. The account of Jerome that Paul assumed this name upon the conversion by him of Sergius Paulus (Acts xiii, 7; comp. August. Confess. viii, 4; Bengel and Olshausen, on Acts xiii, 9) is per- haps not a tradition, but a mere suggestion of that fa- ther himself, on the groimd that the name Paul first ap- pears in the passage following that account. Indeed, Baur (p. 93) would have us believe that this was the view of Luke himself, and that the whole account of the conversion of Sergius Paulus was built up to illustrate this change of name ! But if there had been any con- nection between the two events, it would have been natural for the writer to indicate it (see Neander, p. 108). It is easy to suppose simply that, in becoming a Chris- tian, according to the Eastern custom [see Najie], he assumed the name Paul, as one common among Greeks and Romans, and quite similar in sound to Saul (comp. Chrj'sost. and Theophyl. in Suicer, Thesaur. ii, 648), perhaps with some reference to the etymological sig- nification of the name (comp. 1 Cor. xv, 9 ; Paulus, Lat. small, liftle; comp. Gr. Travpoc). Yet we should then expect that Luke would employ the name Paul from Acts ix, 19 onward. (For another view, see Kuiniil, Comment, ad loc.) See Sergius Paulus.