Tarsus #76

Tarsus was a large and prosperous city in Cilicia, in what is now southern Turkey, and it is best known as the birthplace of the apostle Paul. When a Roman commander mistook him for a rebel in Jerusalem, Paul replied, “I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city” (Acts 21:39). Any reader searching for the hometown of Paul will find the answer here, and the city helps explain his education, his languages, and his comfort in the wider Roman world.

Biblical Significance

Luke records Paul’s own account of his background: “I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city,” meaning Jerusalem, “at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3). Paul therefore grew up with roots in a Greek-speaking Roman city and in strict Jewish training. He also held Roman citizenship from birth, which later protected him from a flogging (Acts 22:25-28). Tarsus is not called a Roman colony in the New Testament, but as a leading city of the province it had considerable civic privileges, and the ancient geographer Strabo praised its schools, comparing them to those of Athens and Alexandria.

Tarsus reappears at key points in Paul’s story. After his conversion, he preached in Damascus and Jerusalem, but when the Greek-speaking believers in Jerusalem tried to kill him, the brothers brought him down to Caesarea and “sent him forth to Tarsus” (Acts 9:29-30). He apparently spent several years there, a period the book of Acts does not describe. Later, when the church in Syrian Antioch began to grow, Barnabas “departed to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch,” where they taught a great many people for a year (Acts 11:25-26).

Paul is also described as a tentmaker (Acts 18:3). Many readers connect this with Cilicia, which was known for a goat-hair cloth called cilicium used for tents and awnings, though the New Testament does not say where he learned the trade.

Today

Modern Tarsus is a city in the Mersin Province of Turkey, a few miles inland from the Mediterranean on the plain of the Cydnus River. Much of the ancient city lies under the modern one, so excavation is limited. Visible remains include a Roman road, a monumental gateway known locally as “Cleopatra’s Gate” after the queen’s famous arrival by river to meet Mark Antony in 41 BC, though the gate itself is a later Roman structure and the name is traditional, and the “Saint Paul’s Well,” which local tradition connects with the apostle’s family home. The Saint Paul Church, a restored nineteenth-century building, is used by visitors as a place of worship.

The Cilician Gates, a narrow pass through the Taurus Mountains not far to the north, is the route Paul and his companions likely used when traveling overland from Cilicia toward Lystra, Derbe, and the other cities of central Asia Minor (Acts 15:41; 16:1).