ANNALES SACRA

THE LIFE OF PAUL

Acts and the letters, on one timeline · Acts · the Pauline letters

Two tracks for two witnesses to the same life: above, the journeys as Luke narrates them in Acts; below, the letters Paul wrote along the way, each block set at the place and moment it was sent. Click a journey or a letter for its dossier; the diamonds on the spine are the turning-points. A dotted edge marks a date the sources leave genuinely open.

The chronology
Anchor Gallio's proconsulship at Corinth · c. A.D. 51 (the Delphi inscription)

The standard reconstruction: Acts supplies the itinerary, the letters are slotted into it, and the whole is pinned to the one externally-dated point — Gallio's term as proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18:12), fixed by an inscription at Delphi to about A.D. 51. From that peg the journeys and letters are counted forward and back.

A.D. 40
A.D. 50
A.D. 60
The journeys — ActsDamascus → Antioch → the three journeys → Rome
Damascus & Arabia
Tarsus & Antioch
First journey
Second journey
Third journey
Caesarean custody
The voyage to Rome
First Roman imprisonment
Release & final ministry
The letters — Paul's handeach set where and when it was sent
Galatians
1–2 Thessalonians
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Romans
The Prison Epistles
The Pastoral Epistles

Click a block or an event on the spine for its detail.

A note on this edition. Pauline chronology is reconstructed, not given. This edition lets you read it three ways — use the chronology switch above to move between the Acts-based consensus (anchored on Gallio's proconsulship at Corinth, c. A.D. 51), Douglas Campbell's letters-first reconstruction (anchored on the escape from Aretas's ethnarch, c. A.D. 36–37), and Gerd Lüdemann's (anchored on the time-spans of Galatians 1–2, counted from a crucifixion of A.D. 30). The two alternatives deliberately bracket Acts and build from the letters alone, so they date the letters earlier and in a different order — and they simply do not fix the Acts-only episodes (the numbered journeys, the Caesarean custody, the voyage and shipwreck, the martyrdom), which is why those blocks thin out or vanish when you switch. Each scheme's dates are drawn from that scholar's own work, but every reconstruction here remains a scholarly proposal, not a record.

The journeys & the letters

The journeys — Acts
The letters — Paul's hand

World English Bible · Public Domain · Wroot Press