What happened in the last few years of Paul's life? Did he ever get to Spain? How and why did he die? Were his plans fulfilled or frustrated? How should we interpret our scant sources? And what light can be shed on these matters by the social, historical, and legal context of Paul's life? In this fresh investigation of the central historical questions, a group of leading international scholars bring together their collective expertise on the apostle Paul and on the Roman, Jewish and early Christian worlds in which he lived and died. Through new scrutiny of all the key sources, a number of fresh questions and hypotheses are developed, with wide significance for all who wish to know about the climactic and traumatic final years of Paul.

Born 1958; undergraduate in Cambridge (Classics and Theology); 1986 PhD in Cambridge; since 2003 Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University.