The Bible is full of blatant contradictions. This one is relatively minor.
We would not expect a “correction” from Paul since he was dead long before Acts was ever written.
Here is what Archer says (or at leasr what Svt4Him says that Archer says):
“Greek makes a distinction between hearing a sound as a noise (in which case the verb ‘to hear’ takes the genitive case) and hearing a voice as a thought-conveying message (in which case it takes the accusative).”
Sounds backwards from what you’re saying.
Ok, then Archer got it wrong (or Svt copied him wrong. Sorry Tracer, I just assumed you got it backwards without checking the original post.
Akouo takes the accusative for thing heard and genitive for person heard. The passage in question uses the genitive (phone) for “voice,” as it does to indicate indirectly that a person is being heard via a “thing” (the voice). It was my impression that Archer was arguing that because it doesn’t say they couldn’t hear the voice in the accusative (as a thing) that Luke was implying that they did hear the voice but just didn’t understand it. As I said before, I think this is specious but it is also undermined by the fact that Acts 9:7 says that they did hear the voice in the genitive. The genitive case is used in both passages so the contradiction holds.
Apos
Please show me where this is.
Thanks for listening
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[1] : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter,[2] and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born..
It doesn’t go into specifics but it implies some sort of visionary experience which would seem to fit the description in Acts.
From what I remember, when someone was found guilty of blasphemy (as the Jews regarded early Christians), the guilty would be stoned to death.
To throw effective stones, you gotta take off your cloak. And sombody gotta hold these cloaks so they won’t get dirty.
Paul was the designated Cloak Holder for such executions.
Diogenes the Cynic - Thanks for pointing that out.
The conversion of Paul could be one of the most inspiring events of all time. One certainly worthy of publication. One in which Paul was told to witness to othes of what he had seen … But Paul is silent on this, save one very vague reference in his epistle to the church at Corinth
Acts 26:16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;
An Instruction, if you please, telling Paul to TESTIFY to his transformation…
And, possibly there is a reference in 1 Cor 15:8 (could just as well refer one of two other events describes in acts, 18: 9 and 23:11
It is just so strange that Paul, never “specifically” mentions it, even after being told by Jesus to do so.to do so.
Thanks for helping.
To be fair, we don’t know everything that Paul said in his “live” sermons, we only know what he said in letters addressed to established Christian communities. Those letters contained exhortations to continued faith but they were not intended as conversion motivated witnessing. The audience was already converted.
I think it’s clear that Paul had some kind of transformative experience. Whether the voice on the road to Damascus was literally it is probably not that important. The basic thrust of his life is the same. He was trying to get Christians out of the synagogues, then something happened (probably while he was headed to Damascus to purge the synagogoues there) and he became a Christian…hell, he became the Christian. It was a significant turn-around, whatever happened.
I personally believe it happened exactly as written in the Bible, with the NIV giving a better picture, and haven’t yet seen anything that proves this is an incorrect testimony.
“Man will believe anything, as long as it’s not in the Bible.”-Napoleon
To answer the OP, it seems unlikely that Paul ever met the pre-crucifiction Jesus. Paul (then called Saul) is first mentioned at the stoning of Stephen:
“And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.”
(Acts 7:58 KJV)
It says he was a young man in that scene. I would take that to mean a man in his late teens or early twenties. That suggests that, at the time of Stephen’s execution, Paul (Saul) was a fairly recent graduate of his religious school. He was born and raised, and probably educated in Tarsus, which was not in Palestine, where Jesus’ ministry took place. Also, being a recent “college” graduate, Paul was naturally bursting with knowledge of Jewish law, and quite eager to put his knowledge to use. I suspect that he was a fairly recent arrival in Jerusalem. His fresh-out-of-school zeal is probably what fueled his desire to eradicate Christians.
As to the men travelling with Paul to Damascus - he was going there for the express purpose of arresting Christians. That being the case, it’s a good bet that the men travelling were temple guards - the Jewish police of the day. So being security types, meticulous religious education was probably not high on the list of employment qualifications. They were hired for their brawn, not their brains.
Why did Paul not frequently mention his conversion experience in his epistles? As Diogenes alludes, Paul was writing the letters to established churches - churches that he himself founded. He lived in each those cities for periods ranging from a few months to several years after establishing each church. It’s logical to assume that he had already told them of his conversion, and they had had ample opportunity to question him about it. There was no need to regale them with the story in the letters - they already knew the story.
Yeah, well my experience is that people will believe anything generally speaking, but especially if it IS in the Bible. :rolleyes:
Thanks everyone for the info…I guess I need to brush up on my New Testament.
Now that you mention it, I hear accusations of biblical contradictions all the time. What, in your opinion, are the most blatant?
Answering the hijack - Here are a few.
Now you can know “something” 
We’ve had a number of threads on this but I’ll recap some of my favorites:
1.) There are different orders given for the creation story in side by side accounts in Genesis.
2.) In Genesis 6:19, God tells Noah to get two of every animal. In Genesis 7:2 God tells Noah to get seven of every animal.
3.) There are different geneologies given for Jesus by Matthew and Luke.
4.) Matthew and Luke also give different names to the father of Joseph.
5.) Luke says that the sermon on the mount happened on a plain.
6.) Matthew and Mark say that Mary Magdeline went to the empty tomb accompanied by the other Mary. John says that she went there alone.
7.) There are three different versions of Jesus’ last words on the cross.
8.) Matthew says that Judas hung himself. Acts says that his guts exploded in a potter’s field.
This is a just a small sampling. There is plenty more.
I’ve heard tell that the story of Paul being a Pharisee are mighty suspect, and that if he was working for the high priest, then he’d much more likely have been persecuting Pharisees (though perhaps he specialized in Christians). Paul certainly doesn’t seem to be an expert in Jewish law, nor does he write in the sorts of idioms and structures you would expect from a Pharisee (a training that produces a pretty distinctive set of literary habits).
The Jesus Seminar is currently working on an analysis of the life of Paul. It should be quite interesting.
I’ve heard it said that he might have been a Roman agent. What are you people’s views/information on that?
He was a tentmaker for the Roman army.
He did have Roman citizenship, did he not? And the people around him were surprised when they found out, meaning he had kept it secret.
Would it be possible he had been persecuting Christians on behalf of the Roman government?
After all, they did crucify the leader of the movement, why not go after the followers?
Did he then infiltrate the movement and try to turn it from anti-Roman into one that was friendly to the Romans?
Any savvy on this idea?
Highly unlikely. The most reasonable alternative theory is that he wanted to marry this guy’s daughter. Her father wouldn’t let him unless he became a Pharisee. He tried. He “flunked out” so to speak. He became extremely vindictive and went to work persecuting Pharisees. While doing this, he found that persecuting Christians was a growing new field, and got into that instead.
That story doesn’t have too much evidence to go on (but then again, neither does Acts, really) either, but the problem with the Roman angle is that the Romans didn’t really pay much attention to the Christians until later on. Jesus’ story was not exactly an uncommon one from the Roman perspective, so it wasn’t something that sparked any real warning signals until the movement got much bigger and more influential.
I woke up this morning and said to my self, “Self, you know what? That list of biblical contradictions isn’t nearly long enough!”
Luke and Paul journeyed together on Paul’s second missionary journey: Luke joined him at Troas, as noted in the change in pronoun in Acts 16:10 from they to we. In addition, Paul mentions Luke in the closing of Colossians and Philemon, while mentioning in 2 Timothy that Luke is his sole companion at that writing.
My point is twofold; one, the puzzling assumption by some that the only information the churches had regarding the events surrounding Paul’s conversion was contained in what we know today as the book of Acts. While we certainly are only speculating regarding the exact substance of Paul’s teachings, it is unrealistic to assume that Paul had not already discussed his conversion experience in detail, specifically as it applied to his ongoing “thorn in the flesh”, and; two, the assumption that Luke “changed” his story after Paul’s death (for what explicit purpose, critics never state) and hoisted a lie upon the very people he seeks to encourage to pursue godly behavior. And, a third point, to boot: the same people expounding upon the Gospel, seeking to impart the commandments of God through His Son Jesus Christ, purposely perpetrating a fraud.
Yet these same charges are held to be credible. Amazing.