Apostle Paul’s Peregrinations Part 2

About the fourth peregrination the information we have is very poor and indirect. Right after his exemption from accusations Paul travelled “to the end of the West”. It is estimated that he went as far as Spain and then he left for the East, visiting the Churches of Ephesus, Macedonia, Crete, Miletus, Nikopolis, Troad, Corinth and probably the Churches of Hierapolis and Laodicea fulfilling his promise to Philemon. He wanted to visit Jerusalem once more; however after the sudden death of Phestus the city suffered from political agitations, so he considered it to be bad timing and he postponed it. There was no way of knowing he would never go to Jerusalem again. He returned to Rome where he was imprisoned once more, this time without the privileges he had the first time. He wrote the second epistle to Timotheus which was meant to be his swan song; he was driven to his martyrdom shortly after that.

The actual time of his death is not known, it is estimated to be around 65-66 A.D. According to tradition and his epistle to Timotheus, he wasn’t tortured because the law prohibited torture for the Roman citizens. He was beheaded and in this way ended the stormy apostolic procession of one of the greater personalities of the Orthodox Church.

Apostle Paul’s legacy

Apostle Paul is considered to be the first Christian theologian; the only one from the first generation of Christians to develop his own specific – even though not complete – theological aspect on theoretical and practical matters. Thus his epistles constitute an authority for the Church and he is considered to be the “first” after the “One” (Jesus Christ).

His Epistles are the first written monuments of the New Testament and are circumstantial thus they were written to answer several questions of the new founded churches. Paul had followed the greek way of writing letters: proem that includes the sender, the receiver and salutation – development of the subject – final greetings. At the end there was always a self-written greeting to declare the authenticity of the letter.

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