St. Paul the Hero

The great American Quaker philosopher and mystic Rufus Jones brings his spiritual depth to this tale of transformation. Written in 1917 as one of Jones's rare excursions into children's literature, this book traces the arc from Saul the persecutor to Paul the apostle with the urgency of an adventure story and the wisdom of a man who spent his life contemplating the depths of religious experience. We meet young Saul in Tarsus, a bright and ambitious boy hungry for knowledge, sent to study under the famed Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem. He dreams of being a hero for his faith. Then comes the stumbling block: the followers of a revolutionary teacher from Galilee. Saul watches Stephen die. He breathes threats against the early Christians. He is, by any measure, a man on the wrong side of history. But the road to Damascus changes everything. Jones tells this familiar story not as doctrine but as drama, revealing the psychological and spiritual stakes of a man whose entire world collapses and rebuilds itself in a moment of divine confrontation. This is the origin story of the most influential missionary in Christian history, rendered with the intimate understanding of a mystic who believed that true transformation is always violent, always possible.