If any one were to be singled out as having done most to ensure that the movement inaugurated through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth became predominantly Gentile in a few decades, it was a Jew. He did so with no intention that it should thereby be divorced from Jews; the threat of its becoming so caused him great agony. His Jewish name was Saul and his Roman, Paul, which in his extant works written in Greek he naturally preferred. We know of him from letters which he wrote to churches, usually those which he himself had founded. We shall here use those letters which are generally agreed to be Pauline – 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, Philemon – but also more cautiously 2 Thessalonians and Colossians despite the doubts cast upon their authenticity. Unfortunately, none of them is addressed to a purely Jewish or to a Palestinian church. Acts, devoted for the greater part to Paul, is a secondary source, whose historical value cannot be casually dismissed, but must, however, be subordinated to that of the explicit and implicit history in the Epistles. The strictly Jewish sources, the Mishnah, the Midrashim and the Talmud, do not refer to Paul directly: cryptic references to him testily uncovered in these add nothing of significance. This almost total silence points to the intensity of Jewish opposition to Paul from the very beginning. Other apostates from Judaism such as the Tannaite Elisha ben Abuyah (Aher) continued to be referred to by the Sages; Jesus found a place in the Talmud.