If Western civilization were asked, in the terms of the old Reader’s Digest column, to name the Most Unforgettable Character It Ever Met, it would surely answer, with a single, sighing voice: Paul. Not Sir Paul the Beatle, blessed as he is in advanced age, but St. Paul the Apostle, who, in the first century C.E., soon after the founding of the Jesus cult, brought to the Gentile world its salvation...