Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

But being a Torah student or teacher was not a salaried profession. Rabbis in Saul’s day, and for centuries afterward, earned their living by other means. Second, the market for tents and similar products would be wide. One might guess that likely purchasers would include regiments of soldiers, but travel was a way of life for many other people as well in the busy world of the early Roman Empire. It seems improbable that a Jewish tentmaker in a city like Tarsus would be selling only to other Jews. We can safely assume, then, that Saul grew up in a cheerfully strict observant Jewish home, on the one hand, and in a polyglot, multicultural, multiethnic working environment on the other. Strict adherence to ancestral tradition did not mean living a sheltered life, unaware of how the rest of the world worked, spoke, behaved, and reasoned.