Saul of Tarsus, it has often been said, was the true founder of Christianity, rather than Jesus who had no more than a handful of followers in his lifetime and appears to have been oblivious of the world outside Palestine. Many of the writings which have come down to us as his are almost certainly by other, later hands - including the famous injunction about women being silent in church, which appears to be an interpolation. Paul-Saul was proud of his Judaism and proud too of being a Roman citizen, and in fact he was on his way to Rome for a judicial hearing when he vanishes from history (the tradition of his eventual martyrdom there is backed by no historical evidence). A.N. Wilson defies tradition by claiming that the Pauline writings are the earliest part of the New Testament, antedating the Gospels - a subject on which most of us are wholly unfit to argue. The book is stimulating and opinionated, but in the end I wondered if Wilson, who is nothing if not versatile, had not strayed a little out of his depth.