How Did the Apostle Paul Die? (8 of 12)

Scripture does not narrate it. Second Timothy anticipates it and stops.

What we have beyond that is a set of traditions of varying strength, and they are worth sorting rather than repeating as a block.

Was Paul Released From His First Imprisonment?

Probably, and the reconstruction should be labelled for what it is.

Acts ends with two years of house arrest and no verdict. The letters to Timothy and Titus then presuppose movements Acts never records. Titus 1:5 has Paul leaving Titus in Crete to appoint elders. 1 Tim 1:3 refers to urging Timothy to remain at Ephesus while Paul went into Macedonia.

None of that fits inside the Acts narrative. Either the Pastorals come from a period after a release, or they come from somewhere else entirely.

There is a further complication that should be stated. The authorship of the Pastorals is disputed, and not only by writers hostile to the tradition. N. T. Wright, who defends far more of the Pauline corpus than most, finds 1 Timothy and Titus hard to fit to Paul’s style and movements, and says that if one were to start anywhere it should be with 2 Timothy, which reads most like him and is hardest to explain as anyone else’s work.

So the reconstruction depends partly on letters whose place is argued. The release-and-second-imprisonment account is the best fit for the data and is held by most of the tradition. It is not narrated by Scripture, and it should be tiered accordingly rather than assumed.

Did Paul Ever Reach Spain?

Unresolved, and it stays unresolved.

The ambition is explicit. Rom 15:24 and 15:28 have him planning to visit Rome on the way to Spain.

The tantalising evidence is 1 Clement 5, written from Rome around AD 95 or 96, which says Paul taught righteousness to the whole world and reached the limits of the west.

That has been read for centuries as Spain, and it is early, which is why it carries weight. But there is a serious counter-reading, associated with Schnelle, taking the limits of the west to mean Rome itself, seen from an eastern vantage point, and identifying it with the place of his martyrdom rather than a further journey.

Both readings are available in the phrase. The Spain mission is genuinely ambiguous and the honest answer is that we do not know.

Wright, working through the same problem, ends by stacking possibilities and then declining to choose, and his conclusion is worth borrowing. Paul lived with a good many perhaps clauses. It is fitting that his biographers do too.

What Does 2 Timothy Tell Us?

That the situation had changed and he knew how it was going to end.

This is not house arrest in a rented house. The letter reads like a cold cell, a coming winter, and a verdict already sensed.

2 Tim 4:6-8 states it: the time for his departure is near, he has fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith, and there is a crown of righteousness in store. That race is the one he named years earlier at Miletus in Acts 20:24, and he is calling it complete.

2 Tim 4:16-17 adds that at his first defence nobody came to support him, but the Lord stood by him and gave him strength so that the message might be fully proclaimed.

And then 2 Tim 4:11 and 4:13, which are the most human verses in the whole corpus. Only Luke is with him. Get Mark and bring him, because he is useful. And when you come, bring the cloak left at Troas with Carpus, and the scrolls, especially the parchments.

A cold man asking for his coat and his books, and asking for the colleague he had once refused to travel with.

How Strong Is the Evidence for Martyrdom Under Nero?

Strong, and it starts within about thirty years.

1 Clement 5, written from Rome inside living memory, places Paul among those brought down by jealousy and says that having borne witness before the rulers he departed from the world and went to the holy place, calling him the greatest example of endurance.

That is early, geographically close, and restrained. It does not describe a method or supply a date, which is part of why it reads as an allusion to something the readers already knew rather than as an invented account.

Rome, under Nero, by execution. That tier is about as solid as anything Scripture does not narrate.

Was Paul Beheaded?

Consistent across the early sources, and it fits his legal status.

The beheading detail first appears in the Acts of Paul, a late second-century apocryphal work. That provenance would normally be a problem, and here it carries a plausible detail rather than a fantastic one: the sword was the citizen’s execution.

Crucifixion was for non-citizens. Paul was a citizen by birth and had used that status repeatedly. If Rome executed him, the sword is what the law prescribed.

Eusebius connects the death to Nero’s persecution and makes clear that sources before him already spoke of Paul being beheaded at Rome.

Core claim: Rome, Nero, sword. Hold that firmly.

Which Details Should Be Held Loosely?

The pairing with Peter and the specific site.

The tradition that Paul and Peter died on the same day is a later embellishment. So are the detailed location traditions, including the Tre Fontane account of the severed head.

Those are the trimmings. They accumulate the way such details always accumulate, and they should not be repeated with the same confidence as the core.

Where Was Paul Buried?

There is a tradition, and there is archaeology that gives it some weight.

Around AD 200, Gaius of Rome says that he can point out the trophies of the apostles, and that going to the Vatican or the Ostian Way one finds the trophies of those who founded the church. Trophies here means monuments marking traditional burial sites.

That is a Roman Christian in the year 200 saying the graves were locally known and visitable.

Structures beneath the basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls on the Ostian Way have been plausibly identified, in Camerlenghi’s work, as part of the very monument Gaius was pointing at, preserved because Christians had been gathering there for generations before Constantine built over it.

That is not proof of whose remains are there. It is decent evidence that the location was continuously venerated from very early, which is a different and more modest claim.

What Did Paul Accomplish?

Roughly ten thousand miles, churches across four Roman provinces, and thirteen letters.

Rom 15:19 has him describing the work as fully proclaiming the gospel from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, which he did in something like fifteen working years.

His method is in 1 Cor 9:22-23: he became all things to all people so that by all possible means he might save some.

And the verdict came inside his own generation. 2 Pet 3:15-16 refers to Paul’s letters, notes that some things in them are hard to understand, and says that unstable people distort them as they do the other Scriptures.

Classed with Scripture, by a contemporary, while the ink was barely dry.

Part of a series following the Apostle Paul timeline.

Sources

Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 5. The earliest external notice of Paul’s death and the limits of the west phrase. Free in full at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Acts of Paul, late second century. The earliest appearance of the beheading detail. Cited as the origin of a claim, not as a witness to events.

Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 2.25. Connects the death to Nero’s persecution and reports earlier sources on the beheading at Rome.

Gaius of Rome, quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.25. The trophies of the apostles on the Vatican and the Ostian Way.

Nicola Camerlenghi’s work on the basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. Supports the identification of structures beneath the basilica with the monument Gaius describes.

N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (HarperOne, 2018), chapter 14. Supports the account of the difficulty in placing the Pastoral letters and the refusal to resolve the Spain question. Supplied in full.

Where the sourcing stops: the Spain question is left unresolved deliberately, with both the traditional reading and the Schnelle counter-reading given. The release and second imprisonment is a reconstruction rather than a narrated event and is labelled as such.

Footnotes

1. The restraint of 1 Clement is what makes it valuable. A later writer would have supplied the sword, the site, and the last words. Clement alludes to something his readers already knew and moves on, which is how people write about events that need no introduction.
2. That the beheading detail comes from an apocryphal source does not settle it either way. The Acts of Paul is unreliable as a whole and this particular detail is exactly what Roman law would predict for a citizen. A bad source can carry a good detail, and the reason to accept it here is the legal fit rather than the testimony.