Saint Paul was not only a religious figure of exceptional power but one of the outstanding makers of history. This is the biography of a man who profoundly influenced people of widely divergent beliefs, races and epochs.

Without the spiritual earthquake brought about by St Paul, Christianity would probably never have survived. Yet Paul's importance extends very widely beyond the religious field. His effect upon Western thought has been immeasurable. This is the man Michael Grant has described in his book. Paul's own authentic voice can still be heard in his surviving letters or Epistles, which not only contain numerous autobiographical clues, but are the earliest Christian documents in existence and rank high among the most valuable literature the world has ever produced.

Dr Grant considers in detail this extant literature, along with material of Paul's four evangelical journeys and discusses the reasons for his spectacular conversion on the road to Damascus. As in The Jews of the Roman World and Herod the Great, he brings together research on Israel on the one hand and Greece and Rome on the other, believing that it is necessary to study these cultures in conjunction, since Paul was a Jew who wrote in Greek and was a Roman citizen. The aim of this book, then, is to bring to life this many sided human being of outstanding and peculiar gifts.