I was on the bus yesterday, when a Jesus-freak engaged me in conversation (he wanted to convert me, or rather, “make me think”. I guess my posting here is proof that he at least did the latter).
He asked me if I believed in Jesus, and if so, what I thought about him, and I answered that I did, but that after all, Jesus didn’t write the Bible; I don’t know how accurate a portrayal it is of what he thought. So we got to talking about Paul.
This is how I always assumed the story went:
Paul is a Roman, and persecutes Christians.
Paul converts to Christianity.
(The Apostles are kind of pissed off with him: he never met Jesus and he’s preaching something different.)
Paul has a vision of Jesus! - Now, I admit I don’t know squat about Paul. Maybe he did have a vision, and truly believed it. Maybe he just wanted to legitimise his church. I admitted it could be either, but that I had thought this was the order of things.
His story:
Paul is a Roman, and persecutes Christians.
Paul is on his way to persecute some Christians in some city somewhere (I forget where), when lo! He has a vision.
Paul converts to Christianity.
Now – it’s possible. People do have visions. I’m not saying their visions are real, but people certainly see things, and believe them. But this order doesn’t seem as likely. Do we have any information on this?
While I’m at it, I might as well ask: does anyone have any good recommendations for books or sites on Paul and the history of the Bible (from a historical perspective)? I’d forgotten until this conversation, even though I know very little about him, I find Paul quite interesting.
I always thought that Paul’s vision of Jesus (on the road to Damascus) was what triggered his conversion to Christianity. I’ll let the experts correct me if I’m wrong…
Much as I hate to give credence to Jesus freaks, his story is correct. Here’s how it’s narrated in the Acts of the Apostles(which was not written by Paul.)
There’s a lot that follows, but the order was Persecution, Vision, Conversion.
Even though this is about a religious theme, it is really more of a General Question than a Great Debate. (It is probably already answered, for that matter.)
Sorry, I just figured GD was the place for religious themed questions!
So he did have the vision first. I wouldn’t have expected that. I don’t have any religious background, so everything I know about the bible is just what I’ve picked up here and there. Thanks, Shodan, for correcting me on the Roman thing.
I guess that just leaves my add-on question: does anyone have any good references for where I can learn more about the actual history?
Ah, yeah, that. I was aware of that, but only fuzzily. I suppose the reasoning behind the name change is “to start a new life”, but why Saul to Paul? It’s quite a half-measure.
The story of Paul’s conversion is told or alluded to a couple of times in the Bible - twice in Acts and again in Galatians I think. Your busmate had the order correct.
Allow me to nitpick one other misconception:
It’s true that the apostles in Jerusalem were pretty wary of their former enemy now claiming to have been converted, so they asked him to come to Jerusalem and meet with James and the others who were the leaders of the church there. They interviewed Paul and became satisfied that he was telling the truth, and set him off to preach. There’s not really any indication that they were pissed at him or that his message was substantially different than theirs.
There was some conflict later on specifically between Peter and Paul, but that was mostly about whether or not non-Jewish Christians had to follow Jewish customs like circumcision.
Yeah, I’m full of misconceptions here, I’m sure. I’ve never been in much contact with Christians, or at least, never in a way that would teach me much about the ins-and-outs of the bible. I wonder where I got the idea their messages were different? (My bus-mate seemed to reinforce my “apostles are pissed” idea, but then again, I didn’t get the impression he really knew much about it).
Well, to be fair, we don’t have a whole lot of records of what the apostles DID teach, compared to what we have of Paul’s. What we have – from Paul himself and from the author of Luke-Acts – claims that they were pretty much in agreement.
And remember that everything we know about Paul comes either directly from Paul, or one of Paul’s fans, or from people pretending to be Paul. So it’s not like we’re getting an unbiased, objective history out of the NT.
The Bible is clear that it was the vision which prompted the conversion. If by “actual history” you’re looking for something other than the Bible, then you’re probably out of luck: There’s little enough said in non-Biblical history about Jesus, much less Paul. You’re basically left with either taking the Bible’s word on it, or guessing.
There was big riff between Peter and Paul, which was ultimately mended. Paul was pretty arrogant about his point of view. But Paul was directed to take his personal insults of Peter to the Pit.
Your dating is about 300 years off. The last New Testament book to be written was probably Second Peter, which probably was written sometime between A.D. 100 and A.D. 150. In fact, the actual Pauline letters are probably the oldest books in the New Testament.
Even heathen textual analysis proponents recognize that SOME of the NT books were actually written by the people they’re attributed to (half of Paul’s letters, at least…pretty much everything else is iffy), which makes 400AD ludicrous.