Paul

Otherwise little attested; known chiefly as the recipient of eight letters from Isidore of Pelusium (c. 360-c. 435 AD), the ascetic monk near Pelusium in the eastern Nile Delta whose roughly 2,000 surviving short letters offer biblical exegesis and moral counsel to a wide circle of clergy, monks, and officials. Several of Isidore's correspondents bear the common Christian name Paul, but without a further qualifier (deacon, reader, priest) this individual cannot be securely distinguished or assigned a specific office or dates. He was most plausibly a member of the clergy or an ascetic in Lower Egypt within Isidore's local circle in the first half of the fifth century. No independent attestation establishes his career, and any more specific identification would be speculation.