Paul made much of his Roman citizenship. It is argued here that he gained this through Paulus Sergius a famous Roman Senator, originally from Antioch in Pisidia.
The connection with Paulus Sergius is obvious. Luke changes the name of his hero from Saul to Paul immediately after they left Cyprus, where Paulus Sergius was the Roman governor, and who was identified in Acts as having just become a new believer in Jesus.
The only problem for this interpretation is the passage in Acts 22:28, where Paul is discussing citizenship with the Roman commander in Jerusalem. The latter said that he had to pay a big price for his citizenship. Paul’s reply is ambiguous, but despite this it is generally translated as, “But I was born a citizen.”
What he actually said (as literally translated) was, “(and/but) I also have been born.”
The only way a person could become a Roman citizen was to be born to a Roman father (who accepted you), or to be adopted by a Roman father. While there is a Greek word for adoption, also used in the New Testament, it is not used here. Nevertheless, one has to wonder whether Paul was actually referring to his adoption here. Yet it seems unlikely that the Greek text can be stretched to mean adoption, since the verb used generally refers to natural birth.
Yet it is only a one-letter change in the text for Paul’s statement to be read as, “I also have become” (gegenemai instead of gegennemai). This would have unambiguously meant that he was referring to becoming a Roman citizen by adoption. Even though no evidence for this is cited in the critical apparatus, it is the most likely option for reconciling the apparently contradictory information.
The evidence for Paul being adopted by Sergius Paulus is too compelling to be ignored. We should not held back from accepting this by an (ambiguous) single reading (and a single letter). Rather, we should be challenged to find a way to provide a more realistic reading than has usually been offered. In any event, the translation offered in our standard text should at least include a note referring to the difficulty of translating this verse, for example: “Literally, ‘I also have been born.'”
Furthermore, when Paul claimed to be a citizen, both here and elsewhere, it has always been difficult to establish the theoretical proposition of how Paul would have been able to prove this. It was never reported that it was disputed, even though the records of Tarsus were not easily available to any of his interlocutors. Yet if Paul was able to claim that he had been made a Roman citizen by a leading Roman senator, like Paulus Sergius, who would have dared challenge it?
Bibliography
R. A. Kearsley, in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, Vol. 7 (Macquarie University, 1994), 240-241.