What is the evidence that suggests that the Apostle Paul was married? I have heard people say over the years that it is likely that the Apostle Paul had been married at some point, perhaps prior to his conversion.  However, there doesn't seem to be any biblical evidence to this end.  What, then, is the evidence in support of this position?
The evidence for Paul being married is fairly scant.

He writes in 1 Corinthians 9:5:


&quot;Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?&quot;

The implication could be made that Paul was complaining about leaving some wife behind.

In Galatians 1:14, Paul says:


&quot;I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers&quot;

One of the traditions, especially if he was a member of the Sanhedrin (which he never outright claimed), is that eventually he would be married.  That said, there is nothing to say that he had necessarily progressed far enough to require a wife.
On the other side (that Paul was not married), the evidence is far more convincing

1 Corinthians 9:5 clearly implies there wasn't a woman travelling with him.

1 Corinthians 7:1-7 has Paul declaring that he has the gift of celibacy.

1 Corinthians 7:8 has Paul directly saying that he is not married -



8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

The tense of the verb is ambiguous as to whether he was at one point married, however. As an aorist verb, the tense is de-emphasized in any event. In at least the NIV, the ‘[a]’ is a reference to a note that the Greek word is also used for ‘widower’.  Of the 4 occurrences of this word in the NT (all in this chapter) this is supposed to be the only nonadjective form and is supposed to include a masculine suffix.  Here and also at verse 40 in the context of widows, Paul personalises the message.  When read as ‘widowers’ this chapter has a natural flow of topics but as ‘unmarried’ there is repetition.
In any event, however, it is clear that even if Paul had been married at some point, by the time he had been to Corinth, he no longer was.