Tarsus, the home of Paul's childhood, held a strategic position in the Mediterranean world.
A few miles farther inland lay what were called the Cilician Gates, a narrow pass through which all traffic must make its way if it was to go beyond the Taurus Mountains. To the west of this pass lay Ephesus, Corinth, and other important cities of the Graeco-Roman world. To the south and east stretched the Semitic world, Syria and Damascus, Palestine and Jerusalem. Thus it was that Tarsus stood as porter at these gates, on the boundary between two mighty civilizations: on the boundary between those who spoke Greek as a native language and those whose mother tongue was Hebrew or Aramaic. In Tarsus how naturally the language of the Old Testament and the language of the New met and mingled ! It is surely no coincidence that this was the city of Paul, who did more than any other Christian writer to bring the real genius of the Hebrew Scriptures to the Gentile world.
Besides being largely a Greek city with possibly one hundred thousand population, of which a good number would be Jewish, Tarsus was the capital of a Roman province. Consequently, it enjoyed the triple effect of Greek, Hebrew, and Roman civilization. It is little wonder that Paul spoke proudly of being "a citizen of no mean city" (Acts 21:39).
