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Okay, I have a major grievance here. This article has been utterly hijacked and taken over by Roger Arguile (and perhaps a few others), an admitted Roman Catholic priest with limited, if any, NPOV. Roger, your tending to this article and overt bias is all over the place. Give it a rest, please. We know where your POV is coming from. You are not the sole arbiter of perception or perspective here. Yes, there is a so-called majority viewpoint that is well known about Paul; but there are many others who have valid issues to provide about Paul without your personal grooming of the article against anything you simply disagree with. Just because you feel an issue about Paul is somehow "settled" (ie. Maccoby and Jefferson) does not mean that it is with others who have a much wider point of perspective than you allow yourself to have. Big deal if you're British and don't care about Jefferson. There are a lot of folks who would like to know what Jefferson thought and did with the canon. Are you the thought police also?? This article does not have to be "orthodox", it needs to be balanced and historical. Please restrain yourself from constantly grooming these articles with your own personal mission of bias even if you may disagree. --Solascriptura 21:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above as far as the bias that has been displayed. Catholics and Orthodox use "Saints" to refer to people but it's not a Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, or any other world religion POV, so it's certainly not "neutral". That's why I took those phrases out and replaced them with the more neutral "Paul" or "Paul of Tarsus" as is in the title. And this page really isn't the place to do an exposition of one's own version of Paul's beliefs and whether or not those are true or correct. To my understanding, that would better fit under "Pauline Christianity." Please, folks, let's try to keep this neutral, shall we? And for the person who stated that "St Paul" Minnesota is named after Paul and so it must be a NPOV, guess again. I live on a street named after "Saint Francis" but that doesn't mean I agree that he's a "saint". It just means someone thought so and I happen to live here after the fact. Standing for Truth 02:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I archived the old conversations. --Ephilei 16:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Paul is never called "Paul of Tarsus" in the New Testament, other non-cannonical documents, or the contemporary Christian Church and only rarely in academic circles. This causes confusion to the many readers ignorant of the minor location, Tarsus. I propose moving to either

• Paul the Apostle or The Apostle Paul Google count 400,000 + 1,200,000= 1,600,000
• Saint Paul (and move the current saint disambiguation to Saint Paul (disambiguation)) Google count 3,200,000

"Paul of Tarsus" has only 100,000 Google hits. These titles follow Christian tradition, contemporary Christianity, academia, and many Christians. Only the over simple term "Paul" is more common. Both "saint" and "apostle" are NPOV titles that do not mean inherent ordination by God, unlike "prophet" or "messiah". They signal the approval of Christianity. There is a long precedent of using this on Wikipedia. Compare the 12 apostles of the Gospels:

• John the Apostle
• Philip the Apostle
• Bartholomew the Apostle
• Thomas the Apostle
• Saint Andrew
• Saint Peter (also called Simon)
• Simon the Zealot
• James, son of Alphaeus
• James, son of Zebedee
• Matthew the Evangelist (also called Judas)
• Judas Iscariot

The only exceptions are all people who share names with other apostles (James, Judas, Simon). All them are called by these names in the New Testament (except Matthew). Paul neither shares a name nor is named anything other than Paul (except "Saul", the Hebrew to Greek transliteration of "Paul"). Note that he is already called "Apostle Paul" on the Christianity tag on this article. Do you prefer Paul of Tarsus, Saint Paul, Apostle Paul, Paul the Apostle or Saint Paul the Apostle? --Ephilei 15:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Paul the Apostle or Saint Paul Just to get it started. Saint is more popular historically, but using Apostle is more consistent and doesn't need disambiguation. Comes out even. --Ephilei 15:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are several St. Paul's - St. Paul of Contantinople, St. Paul of the Cross etc. but otherwisde schoolls and cities are named after the apostle. I would go for 'St. Paul the Apostle'. Roger Arguile 16:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I like Saint Paul the Apostle most of all! --Ephilei 20:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would go remain as is, Paul of Tarsus. Obviously, some qualifier is needed, other than just "Paul." Paul of Tarsus is, as I see it, the most neutral term and is also specific enough to clearly identify the person in question. (unrelated to my own opinion, I am cross-posting notice of this proposed change on the talk pages of some interested wikiprojects). -- Pastordavid 01:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Paul the Apostle. I really don't think titles like "Saint" should appear in article titles, generally speaking. There might be a redirect under that name, but the article title itself should be neutral. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Paul the Apostle would be an improvement over the current title. I tend to use the term "Saint Paul" but agree with TCC. Perhaps Saint Paul can redirect to Paul the Apostle. Majoreditor 02:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Paul the Apostle. What User:Majoreditor said. -- Cat Whisperer 03:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Paul the Apostle seems to be the most consistent. Paul of Tarsus should redirect to it. Itsmejudith 06:55, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Paul of Tarsus - because to the best of my knowledge it is at best dubiously indicated that Paul ever technically was an apostle. I can understand going for the most frequently used name, but accuracy should also be a consideration. John Carter 15:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The first sentence of the article calls him an apostle, and I could find no indication in the article text that Paul wasn't (technically or otherwise) an apostle. -- Cat Whisperer 16:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment He most certainly was an apostle. See Chapter 1 of a randomly selected Pauline epistle. In the Orthodox Church, "The Apostle" unqualified almost always means St. Paul. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

St. Paul is what he is known as by Christians. St. Paul, the city in Minnesota, is named after him. If one is not neutral, neither is the other. Those who disbelieve in the Christian faith may not believe in sainthood either, which is fine, but to call someone by a name that few of his co-religionists would recognise and to deny him the atribute of Apsotle, when there are other saints called Paul in the calender is to carry NPOVity to absurd lengths. After, all the most important reason for doing anything in WP is that readers should be able to find a reference. Describing St. Paul by an attribute which means nothing to Christians - the people who, by and large, tend to talk and write about him most - seems to me to suggest that non-belief is the real position of neutrality.Roger Arguile 14:18, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to come into this late. I don't like "Paul of Tarsus". He was called "Saul of Tarsus", but never "Paul of Tarsus" to my knowledge. "The Apostle Paul"/"Paul the Apostle" I prefer slightly to "St. Paul", but I prefer both to "Paul of Tarsus". I agree with the person who said that "Apostle" or "Saint" are used widely on Wikipedia and do not imply a POV judgement. They are simply the most common designation for many people. Rocksong 03:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone,

Reading through the article, I came across two paragraphs that seemed out of place in St. Paul's early history. They regarded the reliability of Acts vs. St. Paul's letters; the first paragraph argued against the reliability of Acts, and the second paragraph argued for the historical reliability of Acts. They fell in the middle of his biography and were very disconnected from the article.

Though the historical reliability of Acts is an extremely important subject, I'm not sure an article devoted to St. Paul's life can do it justice. Consequentially, I tried to unite and cut down the two paragraphs, pointing people instead to a link on the Acts wiki page for a full discussion. I moved the new paragraph to a spot at the beginning on his life, in a new section, and I tried to include both viewpoints equally.

I understand why someone added these paragraphs in the first place. Since we're trying to give the details of Paul's life, and some people are arguing that one of our two sources is in dispute while the other is not, it makes sense to mention this in passing. It also frames the article nicely, since most of St. Paul's biography that follows cites either Acts or his letters, and we note any (possible) difficulty uniting them. However, it's important that we don't get sidetracked from the main point of the article.

I tried to make this changes in the most NPOV way possible, and I welcome any feedback.

Take care, --Glistenray 19:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm new to this article, so I'm not sure if this has been discussed before. But I noticed that several of the article's sections duplicate work found on other pages on wikipedia. Some overlap is inevitable; if there's a specific article on St. Paul's writing, then in his biography of course we're still going to mention that St. Paul wrote. But what about the lengthy paragraphs on the disputes over the Council of Jerusalem? We might be able to cut that down a little, especially if there is already a separate article on this topic. Same might go for the disputes over the authorship of St. Paul's work; if there are specific, separate articles on them elsewhere on wikipedia, there's no point in reinventing the wheel here.

Other lengthy biographical articles must run into this constantly, especially if they're related to other sub-articles. How did they choose the level of detail in the main article vs. the sub-articles? I guess one concern would be that controversial material (disputes over St. Paul's writings, etc) would always get hidden on subpages, which wouldn't be NPOV.

I'm happy to make the necessary changes myself, but I thought I would check with the community first.

Take care, --Glistenray 20:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My view on the 'Council of Jerusalem' is that some account can't be avoided. I wrote it so I am a bit precious about it. Becuase of the way WP is produced, one can't make all article sfit together. Try not to tread on our corns. Roger Arguile 23:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]