The Conversion of Paul

Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee who is persecuting the followers of Jesus, becomes one of them near Damascus. Acts tells the story three times, and Paul’s own letters speak of it as a revelation of God’s Son and a call to preach to the Gentiles.

Paul, whom Acts calls Saul until his first missionary journey (Acts 13:9), describes his earlier life in his letters. He was a Pharisee, zealous for the traditions of his ancestors, and he persecuted the church and tried to destroy it (Galatians 1:13–14) (Philippians 3:5–6). Acts says that he obtained letters from the high priest to the synagogues of Damascus, so that he could bring any followers of “the Way” as prisoners to Jerusalem (Acts 9:1–2).

As he came near Damascus, Acts says, a light from the sky shone around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked who was speaking, and the answer was, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Blinded, he was led into the city, and three days later a disciple named Ananias of Damascus, sent by a vision, laid his hands on him. Saul recovered his sight and was baptised (Acts 9:3–19).

Acts tells the story twice more, in speeches of Paul, and the versions differ in detail. In the first his companions hear the voice but see no one; in the second they see the light but do not hear, or do not understand, the voice; in the third they all fall to the ground (Acts 9:7) (Acts 22:9) (Acts 26:13–14). In the first two Saul is told to go into the city and wait, and his commission is spoken to Ananias or by him (Acts 9:6, 15–17) (Acts 22:10–15). In the third Jesus himself sends him to the Gentiles on the road, and Ananias is not mentioned (Acts 26:16–18). Paul’s letters give no narrative. They say that God chose “to reveal his Son” in him so that he might preach him among the Gentiles, and that the risen Christ appeared to him last of all (Galatians 1:15–16) (1 Corinthians 15:8–9) (1 Corinthians 9:1).

What followed is also told differently. In Acts Saul preaches in the synagogues of Damascus, escapes a plot of the Jews of the city against his life by being lowered from the wall in a basket, and goes to Jerusalem, where Barnabas brings him to the apostles. He is then sent away to Tarsus (Acts 9:19–30). Paul says that he consulted no one and did not go up to Jerusalem, but went away to Arabia and came back to Damascus. Only after three years did he go to Jerusalem, for fifteen days, to visit Cephas, and he saw no other apostle except James, the Lord’s brother. He then went to Syria and Cilicia, still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea (Galatians 1:16–24). Paul also tells of the basket, but in his account the danger came from the governor under King Aretas, who was guarding the city to arrest him (2 Corinthians 11:32–33).

Paul rested his claim to be an apostle on this event (1 Corinthians 9:1) (1 Corinthians 15:8–9). His message, he wrote, came not from any human being but “through revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11–12). On his letters see the Letters of Paul.

How this is dated

Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.

Neither Acts nor Paul gives a year. The date is reckoned backwards. Paul says that he went up to Jerusalem “after three years” and again “after a period of fourteen years” (Galatians 1:18) (Galatians 2:1). If the second visit is the meeting of about AD 48–49 (see the Council of Jerusalem) and the two spans follow one another, seventeen years separate it from the conversion, which then falls about AD 31–32. If both spans are counted from the conversion, the interval is fourteen years and the date about AD 34–35. If Paul counts part-years as whole years, the intervals are a year or two shorter and the dates later by as much. The text does not say which way to count.

A second check is Paul’s escape from Damascus, which Acts places just before his first visit to Jerusalem, three years after the conversion by Paul’s own count (Acts 9:25–26) (Galatians 1:17–18). Paul says that the city was then guarded by an official of “King Aretas” (2 Corinthians 11:32–33). This is Aretas IV, king of the Nabataeans, whom Josephus shows at war with Herod Antipas and still reigning when the emperor Tiberius died (Josephus, Antiquities 18.109–115) (Josephus, Antiquities 18.120–125); Tiberius died in March AD 37 (Suetonius, Tiberius 73.1). Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, Division I, vol. II (English translation, 1890), pp. 356–359, notes that the dated coins and inscriptions of Aretas run to the forty-eighth year of his reign and puts that reign from about 9 BC to AD 40. The escape would then be no later than about 40, and the conversion no later than about 37. Paul does not explain how an officer of Aretas came to be guarding Damascus. Douglas A. Campbell, “An Anchor for Pauline Chronology: Paul’s Flight from ‘the Ethnarch of King Aretas’ (2 Corinthians 11:32–33)”, Journal of Biblical Literature 121 (2002), pp. 279–302, argues that Aretas could have controlled the city only for a short time, from late 36 into 37; three years back by Paul’s count, that would put the conversion about 33–34. Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology (1998), dates it to 31/32. The timeline places it at 34 and shows the range 31–36.

The Conversion of Paul

How this is dated

Primary sources

Scripture

Jewish Antiquities

The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

In context

Grows out of

Leads to

Along the threads