Pictures By Alan

I wonder what Paul would think of it. Would he want to remind us that he wrote "...I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God"? To me it seems a fitting tribute to him all the same.

Those who carve statues of New Testament figures are somewhat hampered by the fact that the NT does not describe any of them. For Paul, however, there is a scrap of information available. About a century after Paul's execution, an unknown priest gathered together all the information about Paul he could find, from third-, fourth-, and fifth-hand accounts, and published them as the Acts of Paul. Though a hundred years removed from the source, some consider the description of Paul to be quite possibly accurate:

"...And he saw Paul coming, a man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked, full of friendliness; for now he appeared like a man, and now he had the face of an angel."

Could be accurate... it certainly agrees with Paul's own report of what other people were saying about him in Corinth, "For some say, 'His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.' ".