It is believed that one of the central characters of the New Testament changed his name as a sign of acceptance of the new faith. We have checked whether this view is consistent with the text of the Bible.

The expression “from Saul to Paul” has become a catchphrase in Russian with the meaning “to change to the opposite.” As stated on the encyclopedic resource Otrezal.ru, “the noble Jew Saul (Saul) was a fierce opponent of the first Christians: they say that he even took part in the murder of one of them, Stephen. But one day, on the way to the city of Damascus, one legend tells, he heard a voice from heaven reproaching him for dark deeds. The shocked Saul took the name Paul (and the word “paulus” in Latin means “small”, “insignificant”), turned into a convinced Christian and even into one of the preachers of Christianity.”

The fact that a disciple of Christ parted with his former name can be found, for example, from the encyclopedia "Who's Who in the Bible", works of a religious philosopher Vasily Rozanov, the work of Lev Gumilyov "String of History" and many other special and general topics books. Saint Jerome, one of the apostle's biographers, clarifiesthat Saul changed his name in honor of the proconsul Sergius Paul - the first person he converted to the faith of Christ.

Firstly, let us immediately make a reservation that the question of the existence of the real Apostle Paul open still. The object of our interest in this case is that image, that biography, which was formed from biblical texts, and historical realities can only help us in some reasoning.

Let's see what the New Testament says directly on our topic. From the Old Testament we know that God changed the names of two patriarchs: Abram - on Abraham And Jacob to Israel. Here is a slightly different case - one of the key figures in the spread of Christianity changes his name. According to one of the above sources, the decisive event for this was the road to Damascus. It is described in Chapter 9 book "The Acts of the Apostles". After the appearance of the voice of Jesus, Saul began preaching Christianity in Damascus and met the rest of the apostles.

So:
1. In his appearance to Paul, Jesus addresses him as “Saul, Saul” (Acts 9:4).
2. After our hero’s conversion, the future apostle from seventy Ananias addresses him as Saul (Acts 9:17).
3. The Holy Spirit calls Paul Saul before his first missionary journey. Acts says: “While they were serving the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”Acts 13:2).

In total, after the appearance of Jesus before the future Paul, the hero is called Saul 11 times. And the use of the name Paul becomes constant later, after the start of missionary travels: “Sailing from Paphos, Paul and those who were with him arrived in Perga, in Pamphylia” (Acts 13:13). However, there is no direct mention of any name change or abandonment of the old version.

Moreover, immediately before the indicated episode said: “But Saul, who is also Paul, was filled with the Holy Spirit and fixed his gaze on him...” That is, in the New Testament the names Saul and Paul in relation to the same person are directly called equivalent. And the idea of such a combination of Paul's names is not new - a theologian expressed it back in the middle of the 3rd century Origen.

What, then, prompted the evangelists to begin calling the apostle Paul at some point in the text? As many have noted researchers, for a native Tarsa (a city on the Mediterranean coast in modern Turkey) there is nothing unusual about this. According to the series researchers, could be Pavel’s relative koine - the common language of the Hellenistic era, which absorbed various Greek dialects. Just as many immigrants to English-speaking countries choose an anglicized name in addition to their ethnic name, many Greek-speaking Jews in Paul's time had two names from birth: a Hebrew and a Greek/Latin name. We must also not forget that Saul was born on the territory of the Roman Empire and was Roman citizen. Saul (Saul) is a Hebrew name given to first king Israel, and Paul is the Greek form of the Latin name Paulus ("small"). It was when Saul went to preach in pagan lands, whose inhabitants mostly spoke Greek, it would be logical for him to appear to these people more understandable from his names. Paul later recalls that on the road to Damascus, Jesus addressed him “in the Hebrew language: “Saul, Saul!”,” and also does not say anything about abandoning this name (Acts 26:14).

Other source notes, that the reason for the widespread use of the name Paul in the New Testament certainly could not be the Christian essence of this name - it became Christian purely thanks to Paul.

Regarding the transition to the name Paul in honor of the first proconsul Sergius Paulus who believed, as is stated in some interpretations, then the following should be noted. 1) The Bible itself says nothing about such an act, and we are interested in the canonical text. 2) This still would not mean a complete rejection of the name Saul. Authors of the Got Questions portal write, that there was most likely a coincidence here.

Thus, there is no clear evidence in the Gospel that Saul abandoned his name in favor of the name Paul. Two names for one person is not at all rare phenomenon for the Bible. Therefore, by default it is more correct to assume that this did not happen.