Tarsus

The capital of Cilicia and an important university city under Roman rule, and the birthplace of the apostle Paul. After his conversion Paul returned to Tarsus for some years, and Barnabas went there to find him and bring him to Antioch; Paul later repeatedly described himself in Jerusalem as a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia.

Tarsus was the chief city of the Cilician plain in southern Asia Minor, on the Cydnus River not far from the Mediterranean; under Rome it was the capital of the province of Cilicia, famed for learning and wealth, and its citizens enjoyed the rights of Roman citizenship. Its most famous native son was the apostle Paul. After Saul was converted on the Damascus road and was blinded, the Lord in a vision told the Damascus disciple Ananias to go to the street called Straight and look, at the house of Judas, for a man named Saul from Tarsus (Ac 9:11). When the Jews plotted to kill him, the brothers brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus (Ac 9:30). Saul then spent several years in and around his hometown, until Barnabas went to Tarsus to search for him and brought him to Antioch, where the two of them taught the crowds together (Ac 11:25). Years later, when Paul was arrested in the temple in Jerusalem, he told the military commander, 'I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city' (Ac 21:39), and then witnessed to the people that he was born in Tarsus of Cilicia but brought up in Jerusalem and educated at the feet of Gamaliel (Ac 22:3). Tarsus was thus the birthplace of Paul and, through him, a key starting point for the spread of early Christianity to the nations.