I Appeal To Caesar!

Tarsus still exists, and in fact is one of the large cities of present-day Turkey, located on the south coast, near the SE corner of the Mediterranean. P. 3 Freeborn. “Rome was empiric in her organization. She chose and promoted those elements of authority and stability she found was operative in regions that she penetrated. It was probably from some situation at this time that the Roman citizenship was conferred on a group of Jews at Tarsus, a group shrewd enough to read the signs, to feel the winds of coming change and profit by them. Once conferred, the Roman privilege was transmitted by birth.” Zondervan Pictor. Encyclopedia , p. 602. P. 3 The Septuagint. Of the 350 quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament, 300 of them are quoted from the Greek Septuagint Version (LXX). P. 4 Tent Making. G. G. Findlay comments: “Tarsus was a center for the manufacture of cilicium , the coarse goats’ hair fabric of the district, famed for its durability, of which shoes, mats, and coverings of all kinds were made; and the boy Saul was taught this local handicraft. An industry everywhere in demand, this craft supplied him in his [later] wandering apostleship with a means of livelihood, laborious and irksome enough, but adequate for his scanty needs (1 Thessalonians 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:8-10; 1 Corinthians 9:6-18). “Paul the Apostle,” James Hastings, ed., A Dictionary of the Bible, Vol III , p. 699. P. 5 The Greatest joy of a Jewish family, especially a well-to-do family, would be to send their son to Jerusalem and study the Scriptures with the scholars at Jerusalem, and then even become a rabbi! First, however, every Jewish boy must learn a trade to fall back on, and this proved very true with Paul and his tent-making, one of the main trade occupations of Tarsus. Acts 18:2, 3; 20:34.

P. 5 Gamaliel, Acts 5:34-39; 22:3. Jeremiah Bible, p. 1526. “Most famous and revered rabbi of the day, one of the only seven given title ‘Rabban.’ ”

P. 5 Born in First Decade. As F. F. Bruce, well-known Bible scholar states it, “In Tarsus, then, probably in the first decade of the Christian era, Paul was born. Paul Apostle of the Heart Set Free , p. 37.