Isagoge ad lectionem epistolarum divi Pauli apostoli, qua compositionis oeconomia, et germana dispositio indicatur. Opusculum recens. Benedicto Aretio authore.

The fatherland of Paul.

His fatherland was splendid: Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, as the Apostle himself indicates in Acts 22. Born in Tarsus, he says, nurtured in this city. Furthermore, to the Philippians chapter 3, and in the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians 11:22, he also expresses his lineage from Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, and similar things.

In the ecclesiastical writers.

Divine Jerome indicates another fatherland, that he was originally from the town of Gischala, of the tribe of Benjamin, from where he migrated with his parents into Tarsus of Cilicia, after Gischala was indeed captured by the Romans. But these things do not agree with the narrative of Paul in Acts 22, where he confesses he was born in Tarsus, nor is it credible that he would have equivocated there at all, especially among Jews and enemies who would have seized upon this as a lie: nevertheless, it could happen that his parents fled from there into Tarsus.