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Did Paul Commit Suicide?

By Arthur J. Droge

The question this article will explore may appear disturbing at first sight, and for good reason. Since
Augustine’s time, the church has condemned suicide as a sin—a sin beyond redemption, just like
apostasy and adultery. How then could Paul, the premier apostle of early Christianity, even have
contemplated suicide, much less gone through with it?

Three bits of evidence suggest this possibility.

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The first is contextual; it concerns how suicide was viewed in Paul’s time.

I said that suicide has been condemned as a sin since Augustine’s time. He lived in the second half
of the fourth century and the first third of the fifth century. In his confrontation with the Donatists, a
powerful Christian sect in North Africa, Augustine sought to redefine the terms “martyrdom” and
“suicide.” He argued that the Donatist “martyrs” were in fact merely “suicides”—that is to say, self-
murderers.1 As is well known, Augustine’s case against suicide was based on Plato, not the Bible.
Aside from his appeal to the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” Augustine took over the
Pythagorean argument against suicide in Plato’s Phaedo: that to sever the bonds of body and soul
prematurely was to usurp a privilege that belonged only to God.2

Since Augustine’s time the iniquity associated with suicide has generally increased. Over the ages,
suicide has been regarded not only as “sinful,” but as “cowardly,” “irrational” and, more recently, as a
“symptom” of psychological or social disorder.

But in the ancient world before Augustine, this was not the case. In fact, suicide was rather common.
Many people considered suicide justified as a deliverance from all sorts of affliction and oppression.
Some even extolled suicide as the greatest triumph an individual could exert over fate; others saw in
suicide an act of supreme freedom, or a means of attaining immediate salvation.

In general, ancient society did not discriminate against the person who took his own life, nor did it
attach any particular disgrace to the act itself, provided there was sufficient justification for it. We
moderns tend to be more concerned with the act of suicide itself, whereas in antiquity what occupied
religious and philosophical thinkers were the reasons that might justify suicide.3

Augustine and later Christian theologians had considerable difficulty defending their condemnation
of suicide, because neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament explicitly prohibits the act. The
Hebrew Bible records five cases of suicide. In two cases, someone who was already wounded
preferred to die by his own hand (or, more precisely, in one case, by the hand of his arms-bearer).
Abimelech, Gideon’s ambitious son who had himself declared king of Shechem, was mortally
wounded by a woman who dropped a millstone on his head.

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 “[Abimelech] immediately cried out to his attendant, his arms-bearer, ‘Draw your dagger
and finish me off, that they may not say of me, “A woman killed him!” ’ So his attendant
stabbed him, and he died” (Judges 9:54).

Similarly when King Saul had been mortally wounded by the Philistines at Mt. Gilboa, he said to his
arms-bearer:

“Draw your sword and run me through, so that the uncircumcised may not run me through
and make sport of me.’ But his arms-bearer, in his great awe, refused; whereupon Saul
grasped the sword and fell upon it. When his arms-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he
too fell on his sword and died with him” (1 Samuel 31:4–5; see also 1 Chronicles 10:4–
5).

Note that although Saul was already mortally wounded, his arms-bearer committed suicide purely
out of devotion to his king.

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The fourth case involves a former adviser to King David, Ahithophel, who later deserted to serve
David’s rebellious son Absalom. When Absalom decided not to take Ahithophel’s advice,
Ahithophel hanged himself (2 Samuel 17:23).

The fifth case is Zimri, an Israelite officer who treasonously murdered King Elah and had himself
proclaimed king of Israel. Zimri’s reign lasted a mere seven days. When the army declined to follow
Zimri and indeed laid siege to his capital, Zimri closed himself in his royal citadel and set it afire over
himself (1 Kings 16:18).

To these, a sixth example might be added: Samson, who deliberately brought the Philistine temple
of Gaza down on his head after being blinded (Judges 16:29–30). Later Christian exegetes
interpreted Samson’s death as a symbolic foreshadowing of Christ’s self-sacrifice.

The important point, however, is that none of these biblical figures receives censure. Indeed, their
deaths by their own hand are scarcely commented on, leading one to conclude that in ancient Israel
the act of suicide was regarded as something natural and, in some circumstances, perhaps even
heroic.

To my knowledge, the only instance in the Hebrew Bible where an individual considered death and
perhaps wished to kill himself, but did not, is Job (Job 7:15, 13:15).

In Jewish literature of the post-biblical period, pious Jews are often portrayed as taking their lives
voluntarily, rather than betray their religious beliefs. In 39 or 40 A.D., for example, when the Roman
emperor Gaius announced plans to have a statue of himself erected in the Jerusalem Temple, the
Jews solemnly warned the Roman governor Petronius that, if this were carried out, they would first
slaughter their women and children and then kill themselves “in contempt of a life which is not a
life.”4

Although the first-century A.D. Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, records a lengthy speech that he
himself delivered against suicide5 (but, as a Jewish general in the First Jewish Revolt against
Rome, his own neck was on the line!), in the same book he also praised the heroism of the Jews at
Masada, who mutually slaughtered themselves rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.6

Perhaps the most famous Jewish example is the suicide of Razis, which occurred during the
Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV. The incident is recorded in gruesome
detail in the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees 14:37–46. Nicanor, a Seleucid commander, sent 500
soldiers to arrest Razis:

“The troops were on the point of capturing the tower where Razis was, and were trying to
force the outer door. Then an order was given to set the door on fire. Being surrounded,
Razis fell on his own sword, preferring to die nobly rather than fall into the hands of
sinners and suffer outrages unworthy of his noble birth. But in the heat of the struggle he
did not hit exactly, and the crowd was now rushing in through the doors. He bravely ran
up on the wall and manfully threw himself down into the crowed. But as they quickly
drew back, a space opened, and he fell in the middle of the empty space. Still alive and
aflame with anger, he rose, and though his blood gushed forth and his wounds were
severe he ran through the crowd; and standing on a steep rock, with his blood now
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 completely drained from him, he tore out his entrails, took them with both hands and
hurled them at the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him
again.”

The theatricality of Razis’s suicide is of a piece with the literary commonplace of the Gymnosophists
(Brahmans), who threw themselves into the fire and thereby made a protest against Alexander the
Great, and with the stories in Tacitus of the Stoic philosophers who opened their veins in opposition
to the emperor Nero. Also similar is the explicit hope of immortality: Razis “tore out his entrails,…
calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again.” His act of self-destruction is
one of political rebellion, to be sure; but it is also carried out with the full assurance that he will pass
over to a higher reality.

In later rabbinic literature, we find numerous stories of suicide, and this despite the usual claim by
scholars that the rabbis unequivocally opposed the practice. The Mishnah and Talmuds contain
explicit accounts of suicide and martyrdom, as well as discussions relating to the rules and
regulations governing both. For example, the Babylonian Talmud (Ketub. 103b) relates that when
rabbi Judah the Prince died, a “voice from heaven” (bat qol) proclaimed that all those present at his
death would enjoy the life of the world to come. When a fuller, who had the misfortune of not calling
on the rabbi that day, learned of this, he committed suicide. Immediately, a bat qol announced that
he too would live in the world to come.

A similar story in the Mishnah (’Abod. Zar. 18a) describes the martyrdom of Rabbi Hanina ben
Teradion during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138 A.D.). The Romans wrapped the rabbi
in a Torah scroll and set the scroll on fire; to insure that he would suffer, water-soaked tufts of wool
were placed on the rabbi’s heart. His disciples therefore begged him to breathe in the flames in
order to hasten an otherwise excruciating death. When the rabbi refused, the pagan executioner
asked whether he (the executioner) would enter the world to come if he helped the rabbi die sooner.
Receiving an affirmative response, the executioner removed the tufts of wool and the rabbi died. The
executioner then threw himself upon the fire. Suddenly, a bat qol proclaimed that both the rabbi and
the executioner had been admitted to the world to come. The story concludes: “One may acquire life
in a single hour, another after many years.”

In these accounts, suicide is given a clearly positive valuation. Moreover, suicide is understood here
not as a cowardly escape from mundane affairs and troubles; rather, it is seen as an act of sincere
contrition and simultaneous transformation, enabling the individual to atone for his sins and to attain
eternal life. The statement that “one may acquire life in a single hour, another after many years”
bespeaks a view of suicide not as a sin but as a particularly ennobling act: both Jew and pagan can
be transformed by a well-judged and appropriate death.7

In the New Testament there is only one clear case of suicide:8 the death of Judas. Remorseful and
repentant at betraying Jesus, he hanged himself. Like the examples in the Hebrew Bible, Judas’s
suicide is recorded without comment. There is no suggestion that taking his own life was counted as
an additional sin (Matthew 27:3–10). Only later did Christian theologians overturn the implicit
judgment of Matthew and claim that Judas was more damned by his suicide than by his betrayal of
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the Messiah.

The death of Jesus, at least as it is recorded in the canonical Gospels, is curiously ambiguous. Was
his execution an example of heroic martyrdom or a case of suicide? In an extraordinary passage in
the Gospel of John, Jesus’ Jewish hearers understand his repeated sayings about his “going away”
as a suicide threat:

“Then said the Jews, ‘Will he kill himself, since he says, “Where I am going, you cannot
come?” ’ ” (John 8:22; cf. John 7:34, 13:33).

The church father Tertullian described Jesus’ death as a form of suicide. So did Origen, who
affirmed that Jesus voluntarily gave up his spirit, since it was impossible that the deity should be at
the mercy of the flesh. Even Augustine recognized that “[Jesus’] spirit did not leave his body against
his will, but because he willed it to happen and he willed when and how it happened.”9

All the gospels stress Jesus’ prior knowledge of his fate and his willing acceptance of that fate. If it is
not always easy to distinguish between suicide and martyrdom, between killing oneself and
allowing oneself to be killed for a cause, a principle or belief, then Tertullian and Origen—and even
the “Jews” in the Fourth Gospel—were not wrong in describing Jesus’ “going away” as a form of
suicide. How else are we to make sense of the provocative statement of the Johannine Jesus: “No
one takes my life; I lay it down of my own free will” (John 10:18)? That later theologians judged the
act of suicide a sin for which even Jesus’ similar act could hot atone is a telling indication of the
distance that Christianity has traveled in its thinking about suicide.

Now let us return to the possibility that Paul committed suicide. In considering this question, we must
do so in the context in which suicide was regarded in Paul’s time, not from our own perspective and
not from the perspective of the post-Augustinian period.

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The next bit of evidence is from one of Paul’s letters, in which we learn that he indeed contemplated
taking his own life. Writing from prison in Ephesus, Paul wrestles with the question of suicide
(Philippians 1:21–26):

“For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain…. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am
hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far
better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I
know that I shall remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith,
so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming
to you again.”

In the final analysis, Paul declares, the gospel will be better served by his continued existence
rather than by his departure in death. And so he consents to go on living. But first he carefully
considers the advantages of each possibility: “To be or not to be.”

Paul is torn between the necessity of preaching the gospel in his life, on the one hand, and his
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desire to be united with Christ in death, on the other. Although the former is judged to be “more
necessary” (anangkaioteron), the latter is, literally, “much more better” (pollo mallon kreisson), since
it means union with Christ and immortality. That is why he can say so emphatically in Philippians
1:23 that he “lusts after death” (epithymia eis to analysai). Although Paul finally rejects the “gain” of
death, it is clearly death that he prefers. This is confirmed by a similar statement of his in 2
Corinthians 5:1–8:

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God,
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to
put on our heavenly dwelling…. For while we are in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not
that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal
may be swallowed up by life…. So we are always of good courage; we know that while
we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord…. We are of good courage, and
we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

The final sentence is important; for the phrase “we would rather…” (eudokoumen mallon) does not
express a preference but a decisive choice.

If death is such a gain, why does Paul finally choose life instead? Here attention must be given to
his statement in Philippians 1:24, “To remain in the flesh is more necessary on your [i.e., the
Philippians’] account.” In other words, Paul believed that, for the present at least, he was still
obligated to his churches and under a divine commission to continue preaching the gospel (see his
statement in 1 Corinthians 9:16). While the option of suicide was considered and, indeed, found
personally desirable, it was ultimately rejected because it contravened his understanding of the
present will of God, namely, that Paul continue his earthly service. But it is not the case that Paul
rejected suicide per se, only that it was not yet the appropriate occasion for such an act.

Note that Paul’s reflections on life and death in his letter to the Philippians do not arise from the fact
that he faces imminent execution. Although he is in prison, by the time he writes his letter to the
church at Philippi he has every reason to expect that his case will receive a favorable verdict from
the Romans (Philippians 1:25–26). That is why he can say to the Philippians that he is looking
forward to visiting them in the near future (Philippians 2:24).

Paul’s attitude toward suicide was by no means unusual, nor even confined to Christians. A similar
position on suicide was endorsed by Paul’s younger contemporary, the Roman Stoic philosopher
Musonius Rufus, in a statement that can be read almost as a paraphrase of Paul’s remarks in
Philippians 1:21–26. “One who by living is of use to many,” Musonius declares, “has not the right to
choose to die, unless by dying he may be of use to more.”10 Note that Musonius is not opposed to
suicide, only to suicide committed without sufficient justification.

The same view is found again in Epictetus, the well-known slave-turned-Stoic philosopher.
Epictetus tells us that he encountered a fascination with suicide among some of his students that
was so strong that he felt obliged to moderate against it. These young men appealed to him in the
following manner:

“Are we not akin to God, and have we not come from him? Allow us to go back whence
we came; allow us to be freed from these chains that are fastened to us and weigh us
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 down. Here there are thieves and robbers, and law courts, and those who are called
tyrants. They think they have some power over us because of this paltry body and its
possessions. Let us show them that they have no power over us.”11

The death-wish of these young Greeks has two sources: first, a longing to escape from the prison of
the body (for Paul, “this earthly tent”) and, second, an equally strong desire to return “home,” to attain
immortality by reuniting with the deity (for Paul, “to depart and be with Christ”).

I of course recognize that I have not proved that Paul committed suicide, only that it is a reasonable
possibility. One final fact, however, points in this direction: We do not know the circumstances of
Paul’s death. We do not know how he died. We do not even know when or where.

The last bit of reliable information about Paul’s life comes from his own hand. In Romans 15:22–29,
he sketches out his travel plans for the immediate future. Writing from Corinth in the mid-50s, Paul
tells the Roman Christians that he hopes to visit them in the near future and then to go on from
Rome to Spain conducting missionary activity. But first, he says, he must travel to Jerusalem with
the collection of money he had been gathering for the “poor among the saints” there. Now we simply
do not know whether Paul ever made it to Jerusalem or, if he did, whether he ever reached Rome.
(Few would argue that he went on from Rome to Spain.)

The problem is a lack of reliable sources. According to Luke’s account in the Book of Acts, written
some 50 to 75 years after the events it purports to relate, Paul did eventually travel to Jerusalem,
where he was arrested by the Romans and then sent on to Rome to stand trial before the emperor.
Many critical scholars, however, question the historicity of this account.12 But even Luke ends his
account with Paul under house arrest in Rome, with enough freedom to continue preaching “openly
and unhindered” for two years (Acts 28:30–31). Luke ends Acts with Paul still alive and preaching
openly under the benevolent protection of the Romans. It seems then that Luke either had no
information about Paul’s ultimate fate, except what he could glean from Paul’s letters themselves, or
that if he knew how Paul died, he deliberately suppressed the information.

The only other New Testament document that deals with Paul’s death is 2 Timothy, a letter forged in
Paul’s name sometime in the early second century. Like Acts, it too is curiously silent about the
circumstances of Paul’s death. The letter contains a very moving farewell to Timothy by a “Paul”
who is apparently facing imminent execution, but it tells us nothing more than that. Was the author of
2 Timothy also ignorant of the details of Paul’s death, or did he too suppress the information?

Aside from the New Testament, we have a document known as the Acts of Paul, written in Asia
Minor between 185 and 195. It is even less historically reliable than the canonical Acts. The Acts of
Paul concludes with an account of Paul’s martyrdom during the emperor Nero’s reign. According to
this account, Paul was arrested in Rome and beheaded (with milk spurting out onto the
executioner’s clothing!). After his death, however, Paul appeared to Nero. A good story, to be sure,
but nothing more.

It is odd that we know so little about the fate of the man who has been called the founder of
Christianity. Did Paul ever reach Rome? Was he brought there to stand trial? Was he then
released? Or executed? And why, in any case, did later writers not inform their readers of Paul’s

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fate? Was there something they were trying to conceal?

There are three possible answers to the question of Paul’s fate. Either he died of natural or
accidental causes, or he was arrested and executed or he committed suicide. The first is certainly
possible. In his letters, Paul writes of the hardships and dangers to which he was continually
exposed in his missionary travels: sickness, hunger, robbers, shipwrecks and so on (Galatians
4:13–14; 2 Corinthians 6:4–10, 11:25–27). It may well be that Paul perished from such
circumstances or from old age.

Execution (or martyrdom) is also a possibility. Paul writes of having experienced numerous
imprisonments and beatings that left him at the point of death (2 Corinthians 11:23–25). It may be
that he died as the result of these, or that having stood trial he was found guilty of sedition and
executed (2 Corinthians 1:8–9).

But it is just as possible that Paul died by committing suicide. As his letter to the Philippians reveals,
Paul was a man torn between the possibilities of life and death. Indeed, the language of Philippians
1:23 indicates that he strongly desired and seriously considered killing himself as a shortcut to
Christ and immortality. Admittedly, he kept himself from it because he believed that his divine
mission was not yet complete. But what if Paul believed that his missionary work was finished, that
the divine necessity that had been placed upon him had been finally removed? What if he became
convinced that “he had fought the good fight and finished the race,” that the time of his departure had
come? What if Paul reached the position of failing health or old age, so that he could no longer carry
out his divine commission? Then I think it equally possible that Paul would have committed suicide
and done so with a clear conscience and with the expectation that he would pass into immortality,
united with Christ.

Endnotes:

1. The relevant texts by Augustine are Against Gaudentius (a Donatist bishop) and City of God
1.17–27.

2. See further Jacques Bels, “La mort volontaire dans l’oeuvre de saint Augustin,” Revue de
l‘histoire des religions 187 (1975), pp. 147–180.

3. The best study of suicide in Greco-Roman antiquity is by Rudolf Hirzel, Der Selbstmord
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967). Of the enormous literature on the
subject, I mention only a few noteworthy studies: Alfredo Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of
Suicide (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 45–75; Yolanda Grisé, Le Suicide dans la
Rome antique Montreal: Bellarmin, 1982); and John M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 233–255.

4. Philo, The Embassy to Gaius 236.

5. Josephus, The Jewish War 3.362–382.

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 6. Josephus, The Jewish War 7.320–388.

7. See further Fred Rosner, “Suicide in Biblical, Talmudic, and Rabbinic Writings,” Tradition 11/2
(1970), pp. 25–40.

8. In Acts 16:27–28, Paul is said to have prevented the suicide of his Philippian jailer, no doubt in
order to convert him.

9. Augustine, On the Trinity 4.16.

10. Fragment 29 in Cora E. Lutz, “Musonius Rufus: ‘The Roman Socrates, ’ ” Yale Classical
Studies 10 (1947), pp. 132–133.

11. Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.13–15, in W. A. Old-father, tr., Epictetus, Loeb Classical Library
(London: Heinemann, 1925).

12. There are so many contradictions between the Paul of the Book of Acts and the Paul we know
from his own letters—differences in theology, biography, chronology and geography—that it
makes quite impossible to accept Luke’s narratives at face value. See the famous study of this
problem by John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, rev. ed.
1987).

bsbr050601500l.jpg

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Scala/Art Resource, New York. NY

How? Where? When? These questions enshroud the death of the apostle Paul, portrayed in this
12th-century mosaic the Monreale Cathedral, Palermo, Italy. In light of Paul’s contemplation of
suicide (Philippians 1:21–26 and 2 Corinthians 5:1–8), the mystery surrounding Paul’s death
suggests the possibility that he may have committed suicide and that knowledge of the event was
suppressed in the New Testament as well as in apocryphal writings. Although startling to modern
sensibilities and seemingly contradicting his saintly position, Paul’s suicide would not have been
viewed, in his own time, as a sin, provided he had sufficient justification for the act.

bsbr050601600l.jpg

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© 1989. The Pierpont Morgan Library. New York. M 638. F. 14

Abimelech’s suicide. Gideon’s son and self-declared king of Shechem, Abimelech, lower center,
falls to the sword of his own arms-bearer, whom he ordered to kill him. While assaulting a tower
during an attack on Thebez, Abimelech had received a mortal wound, a crushing blow to the skull
from a millstone dropped by a woman in the tower, upper right, in this illumination from a 13th-
century, French manuscript. This circumstance provided justification for his suicide—one of only five
in the Old Testament—because he did not want men to say, “A woman killed him” (Judges 9:54).
Such a justification for suicide was acceptable in Abimelech’s time, because suicide was not
regarded as a sin beyond redemption until the time of St. Augustine (354–430). Indeed, no explicit
prohibition against suicide appears in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.

bsbr050601700l.jpg

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© Erich Lessing

Suicide as repentance. According to Matthew 27:3–5, Judas repented his betrayal of Jesus and
hanged himself, the only explicit case of suicide in the New Testament. Depicted in this sixth-
century alabaster relief—on a pillar of the altar canopy at the Cathedral of San Marco, in Venice,
Italy—Judas’s suicide draws no condemnation in the Gospel account. This treatment of the event is
consistent with the morality of the time, which regarded repentance and the need for atonement as
justification for suicide. Later Christian theologians, however, saw Judas’s suicide as a greater sin
than his betrayal.

bsbr050601800l.jpg

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© Three Lions/Superstock

“St. Paul in prison” by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) portrays an aged, pensive Paul, soon to
achieve his desire to “be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Paul’s
letter to the Philippians (1:21–26) shows that he actually considered suicide because of this desire,
but abstained from the act in order to continue preaching the gospel. The inconclusive accounts in
various sources, however, leave open the question of Paul’s ultimate fate. The Book of Acts ends
with Paul under house arrest in Rome; 2 Timothy, which was probably not written by Paul, gives a
farewell from a Paul apparently about to be executed; and the apocryphal and highly unreliable Acts
of Paul details a fanciful beheading.

Magazine:
Bible Review, December 1989
Volume:
5
Issue:
15
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Source URL (modified on 2015-11-05 20:46): https://www.baslibrary.org/bible-review/5/6/4

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