(18 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
Loading...My book on the “Triumph of Christianity” will deal with how and why people converted to the Christian faith. (As I think I’ve said, unlike some scholars I have no problem calling the earliest followers of Jesus who came to believe in his resurrection “Christian.”) The best known and most important conversion was Paul. Seeing how/why he converted is a key for understanding his own subsequent mission to convert gentiles to the faith. Here is my current thinking on the issue
To start with, it is impossible to know either what led up to Paul’s conversion or what exactly happened at the time. We do have a narrative description in the book of Acts, and it is this description that provides the popular images of Paul seeing a blinding light on the road to Damascus, falling from his horse, and hearing the voice of Jesus asking “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me” (Acts 9:1-19). The account of Acts 9 is retold by Paul in both chapter 22 and chapter 29. The historical problems it presents have long intrigued and perplexed scholars. For one thing, the three accounts differ in numerous contradictory details. In one account Paul’s companions don’t hear the voice but they see the light; in another they don’t see anyone but they hear the voice. In one account they all fall to the ground from the epiphanic blast, in another they remain standing. In one account Paul is told to go on to Damascus where a disciple of Jesus will provide him with his marching orders, in another he is not told to go but is given his instructions from Jesus himself on the spot. Clearly we are dealing with a narrative that has been molded for literary reasons, not with some kind of disinterested historical report.
The other problem is that
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In this translated version of luke 13:35, we can see that Jesus son of Mary peace be upon him clearly state if he leaves then the only way he will be coming back is when all people praise the Almighty. Meaning it’s not going to be a private matter as Paul said, besides if he leaves the only other way to Complete a message he points out in another verse is when the comforter comes and tells you all things.
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
“Behold, your house is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall not see me until you will say, ‘Blest is he who comes in the name of THE LORD JEHOVAH!
An Aramaic writer would not call God by the name Jehovah. Jehovah is an invented English rendering based on a misunderstanding of Hebrew manuscripts of the Tanakh. When the scribes of the Middle Ages began inserting vowel markings in the texts so readers would not misspeak when reading aloud (Imagine if English were written without vowels. Would “fr ngns” mean “fire engines” or “four engines?”) they left the name of God YHWH unmarked because Jews were not to pronounce that name. Rather than supplying the vowel sounds for YHWH, they put the vowel sounds for adonai, which means “lord” in Hebrew, in the margin, to indicate the reader should say “adonai,” not “YHWH”. That is why most English translations of the OT render YHWH as LORD (all caps to inidicate the word being translated is YHWH, not adonai. But some Christian, English speaking translator didn’t know all this. He presumed a scribe had forgotten to point the text at that point and someone later inserted the vowel sounds in the margin. He inferred from that that the correct pronunciation of YHWH (or JHVH, as was the accepted transliteration) was something like JaHoVaiH, which came to be spelled Jehovah. Hence, Jehovah is a nonexistent name in both Hebrew and Aramaic, and Jewish writers in the time of Jesus and after would never speak the name, however it would be correctly spelled.
I wish I could remember how I reacted to the inconsistent retellings of Paul’s conversion in Acts. I am fairly certain I was of the mind that the Bible is inerrant, so I would not have doubted that Paul actually described his convernsion inconsistently and that his accounts differed from Luke’s which, somehow, must have derived from Paul’s own account (which may have differed yet again when he told it to Luke). Putting myself in the place of that young literalist, I am sure I must have realized that people change details when they retell some event, not because they are liars but because they forget. This is the thesis of your most recent book. Of course, you provide solid evidence for why people do this, while most of us know from experience that everyone but ourselves does that.
My question: Could Paul, in the first-hand account he gives in Galatians, have forgotten that he spoke with another Christian (Ananias or someone else — perhaps the source of the Acts version of Paul’s conversion) before leaving Damascus, as well as other details: where he was — in a house, on the road — whether he went to Jerusalem before going anywhere else? The fact that it is Paul’s own account doesn’t mitigate the fact that he is telling it some twenty years hence by the time he relates it to the Galatians. Why should we trust Paul’s first-hand, twenty years removed memory more than someone else’s sixty years removed retelling of another retelling of what was originally Paul’s memory?
Yes, he certainly could have forgotten it. But my hunch is that Paul better remembered what happened to him 20-25 years earlier than an author writing 50 years after the event would remember, esp. if that author never even knew Paul!!
If he never saw Jesus, how could he have had a vision of the man? My impression was always that he saw a blinding light and heard a voice speaking to him, but his own description is extremely vague. Maybe he saw some angelic figure. What he thought Jesus should have looked like, except at the time he had the vision, he supposedly thought Jesus was a heretic and a scoundrel.
Paul’s Jesus, the one he wrote about, is not the Jesus that the disciples knew. They knew a man who ate, drank wine, laughed, associated with persons of low repute, told stories, and presumably crapped behind bushes. They knew a man. Paul never knew the man. To him, Jesus was an ideal. We all know what that’s like–to idealize somebody we’ve never met. Paul just took it to a different level.
There are people that have visions of Jesus today. One of my former coworkers swore he saw Jesus and that he spoke to him. I also remember seeing a comment on the blog by someone who said he and his wife saw Jesus when they were in a car driving down the road.
Obviously, but that’s after well over a thousand years of artistic depictions of Jesus. Western civllization has spent a long time creating a generally accepted image of him as a tall bearded caucasian with brown hair. Paul had no such collective image to draw upon, nor was he punch drunk that we know of…(warning, one expletive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ04FDE2eWo
Suppose you went blind at an early age, and only then became a fan of Elvis Presley, listening to his recordings, reading books and articles about him in braille. You know what men look like, but you never saw this particular man. Maybe various people have described him to you, but their memories are all different, and anyway, hearing a description will always lead to a different image in your head than the person making the description.
That’s a whole lot more information than Paul would have had to work with.
Ha! The video was funny. Sounds about right!
Have you read anything about Akiane Kramarik? She was a child prodigy who painted the Prince of Peace based on her visions of Jesus. Her parents were atheists, but at the age of 4 she began having heavenly visions and heard God’s voice. She said God encouraged her to draw and paint. The little boy who inspired the book Heaven is for Real claimed his vision matched Kramarik’s depiction of Jesus.
Here’s a link to her work. It’s categorized by the age she created each piece. Prince of Peace was painted at the age of 8.
https://www.akiane.com/store/
I think we should acknowledge the possibility that he had a vivid dream, not a “vision.” At least some people are *more* likely to accept dreams as being “true.”
I think it was you I told about my very vivid dream that seemed different from other dreams. My sister had an “experience” that lasted for several days. And, no she wasn’t on drugs lol…but it was pretty wild.
Regarding Jews accepting the salvation of the Goyim, in modern times Jews have advanced the concept of the Noahides, but back in the time of Paul did the Jews think the Goyim were doomed or did they think they had chance?
Gentiles were always free to worship the God of Israel.
My thought is that Paul obviously imagined seeing Jesus who he then labeled the Christ. Maybe it was a dream. I also think that if Paul was as zealous for the ways of Pharisaic Judaism as he claims he was, then his conversion process must have occurred over a long period of time. I find it almost unbelievable that someone could make the change that he claims he made. Is there any other record of individuals converting from zealous Pharisaic Judaism to something that is the complete opposite? Doing a 180 religiously?
I’m afraid we don’t have biographies of anyone who was a Pharisee.
Another Paul question: since he was convinced the end was very near (as close as tomorrow?) why did it take him three plus years to get started on his mission? Seems like the end could have come and he would have still been preparing to start.
Good question. But we don’t know that it took him three years to start. He says that as soon as he had the revelation he went off to “Arabia,” which probably means the Nabatean kingdom. It’s only a kind of legend that he went there to meditate for three years before starting his mission? He may wall have been doing his mission there. Or something else! So we really don’t know what was happening at that time or why.
A rabbi who was also a friend and a therapist whose view was that Paul’s zealousness was a part of his personality, his psychology. He said he was zealous for his Jewish faith; when he was came to judge those who continued to believe Jesus was the messiah after his crucifixion, he persecuted them zealously; when he came to believe in the risen Jesus, he pursued that zealously. His zealousness had less to do with the content of his convictions and more to do with his temperament which does not transmute as readily as beliefs can.
I think this is absolutely right–and we see this behavior pattern to this day. There were no more overzealous conservatives than the early Neoconservatives, who began as Marxists, then became disillusioned and went the other way. The black leftist radical Eldridge Cleaver went to Russia, and came back as a far right thinker. Others go from right to left, from atheist to theist, from theist to atheist, and the transition, if anything, makes them more zealous than they were before.
Some people want to believe they have the truth–whatever it is. Not merely know some truths, but THE Truth. It’s a sense of ownership, and they cling to it fiercely. They may change it once, shedding their early set of beliefs for another, but rarely twice, because once a truth has been found, it becomes THE Truth, and the owner’s whole sense of self rests upon it. And such men can be dangerous, no matter what kind of belief we’re talking about, as Dr. Johnson well knew.
https://books.google.com/books?id=YTFDAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=pity+him+afterwards,+samuel+johnson&source=bl&ots=3tqvHvx1NQ&sig=3ut9zRUVzsJLx5CbmPF6gRP2jwg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpx_Go5rPNAhUFPCYKHfkcBZwQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=pity%20him%20afterwards%2C%20samuel%20johnson&f=false
But Paul, happily for those around him, had embraced what was then a rigorously pacifist belief system. No need to knock him down first and pity him afterwards, though that may in fact have happened. The Romans tended to knock down anybody they saw as a threat to social order, and pity them not at all.
hello Bart
as an expert on the history of early christianity do you believe “Testimonium Flavium” have been inserted into the Antiquities about the time of the 4th century .
thanks
I think the heart of it was original but it got “Christainized” by a later scribe.
The most telling thing about Paul, to me, is that his change in perspective seems radical but in an important way, he didn’t change at all. He went from all-in AGAINST the Christians to all-in IN FAVOR of Christianity. If the biblical accounts are to be believed Peter saw a similar lack of transformation – he went from clueless and flighty in dealing with a living Jesus to clueless and flighty in dealing with the “judaizers” while in Antioch
I am often puzzled by the purported conflict, reflected here, between actual religious experiences and imaginary ones. It is precisely in the human imagination that people have some of their most powerful and life changing religious experiences. As George Bernard Shaw put it in his play Saint Joan, messages from God of course come to us in the imagination. That makes them no less real or actual. For sure, not everything we imagine is a religious experience. It is through a process of spiritual discernment that we distinguish genuine religious experiences from mere phantasms; perhaps this is what Paul was doing when afterwards he went away to Arabia. Granted, religious experiences are beyond the reach of verification by the modern historian. But that Paul claimed to have had such an experience of the Risen Jesus seems beyond reasonable historical dispute and the early Christians in the community that gave birth to Acts of the Apostles plainly believed Paul even as they may have mythologized some details of Paul’s profound encounter. But skeptics are at least disrespectful when they respond to Paul’s claim by dismissing it as a mere figment of his imagination. Religious experience is real and it deserves more humble regard than that.
the important word in your posting is “claimed.” No doubt Paul claimed to have met the risen Christ. Is there any reason we should believe him?
Depends what you mean. I don’t think he was telling a bald lie. But I also don’t think Jesus physically appeared to him.
I am curious what your response is to the claim some make that in the Greek it is reasonable to interpret that Paul’s companions heard the voice speaking to Paul but did not understand the words that were spoken.
The Greek doesn’t say that. You *could* interpret one passage as saying they “heard” the voice and the other to be saying they did not “obey” the voice. But that doesn’t quite make sense since the voice wasn’t ordering them to do anything.
Great stuff! Thank you.
Quick typo from the second paragraph: The third account in Acts is in chapter 26, not 29.
Regarding the hearing/seeing discrepancy, could the Greek words used in one account mean “hear something” and in the other “hear a voice,” and could the Greek words used in one account mean “see something” and in the other “see a person”? I need your help with the Greek!
I agree it would still be weird for one account to emphasize something heard and for another to emphasize something seen. But what if the companions saw the bright light, and heard an accompanying “whoosh,” and heard Saul falling to the ground, and heard Saul’s grunts of surprise and confusion as he was being talked to (these sounds aren’t stated in the accounts but they don’t seem too unreasonable to me if I’m picturing the situation)…would the accounts be compatible with that? And if so, would it be reasonable to conclude that both parts of these accounts are conveying the same idea, namely that Paul’s companions experienced something general, whereas Paul experienced something more specific?
(I’m an atheist, by the way. 🙂 Not that that matters, I just feel that sometimes it’s helpful to know where people are coming from.)
Thank you!
Yes, it’s possible to figure out ways to make discrepancies disappear — it just depends how creative one wants to be! The question would be then why there are discrepancies at all (since there don’t *need* to be!)….
I sometimes wonder if Paul’s conscience/emotions finally blew up over his brutal treatment of Christians who had done no harm to him and who, perhaps, even showed him love. But there is no way to know.
Dr. Ehrman, though it’s dangerous to attempt a diagnosis 2000 years after the fact (which didn’t seem to stop me from making one in a previous comment), I wouldn’t be surprised if the historical Paul had some kind of mental disorder — possibly schizophrenia (see me previous comments as to why). If it was, indeed, the case that Paul had a mental disorder that made him think he saw and heard the risen Jesus, then such a mental disorder (i.e. schizophrenia) would also explain why A) Paul felt he was suddenly on a special calling to spread the Gospel (delusions of grandeur); B) Paul was paranoid that he was being undermined, both by his “brothers in Christ” who disagreed with him (cf. his falling out with Barnabas in Acts 15:36-41) and non-Christian “persecutors”, all of whom, in Paul’s mind, were being guided by Satan; and C) Paul was such an irascible pain in the ass. In fact, from the account of him in Acts — which is supposed to be a flattering portrayal! — one gets the sense that no one really liked Paul, but they tolerated him because he was at least getting stuff done. I’m reminded of other leaders with similar qualities, who few people actually liked, who were always paranoid that the world was against them, who felt they had a special God-given purpose. Indeed, with only a modicum of power Paul could have easily become one history’s biggest megalomaniacs. https://www.amazon.com/Historys-Most-Insane-Rulers-Megalomaniacs/dp/1483981126
Do you think 2 Cor 12 has to do with his conversion? “14 years ago”? “Caught up to the third heaven”?
I’ve never thought so but argument have been made both ways.
I think this is a very strong possibility. The apocalyptic language, the coy self-reference…from my reading I find this pretty convincing. But my specialty is really later Greek and Latin writers, and I am neither a NT scholar nor the son of a NT scholar.
Hi Prof Ehrman,
Re the Galatians 1 15-17 ref. several translations YLT, NASB, ERV read “revealed his son IN me” which makes a lot of difference to the sense of what is being said. Which is correct ” to me ” or ” in me “?
Best wishes, Teresa
It can mean *both*. It might even mean both at once: this is a revelation by God to Paul that came through mental insight (inside his head).
Dumb question: Why the rename from “Saul” to “Paul”, specifically?
That is, is there an actual connection between the names (i.e. other than the, presumably uninteresting, fact that they are spelled similarly)?
He never was renamed. Saul was his Hebrew name; Paul his Greek name.
Ah. Sort of analogous to “Jacob” vs “James”, I take it.
Got it. (Thanks)
Looking forward to your upcoming book and am reading MacMullen’s “Christianising The Roman Empire,” in anticipation. In his chapter “What Pagans believed,” MacMullen really only deals with Roman paganism, which in itself was already a kind of male hierarchical system. Other types of paganism – Celtic worship of the triune goddess Cailleach, for instance – provide a better contrast. If in your book, you intend to consider what was lost by the triumph of the Christian mission, perhaps you will cast your net wider.
These comments are interesting in the light of comments made by Hugh J. Schonfield in his book “The Politics of God” (P113) where he gives the impression that many of those who became Christian in the early years of Chrisitianity were converted only very superficially!! Isn’t one of our problems today that fact that so many so-called Christians have only a superficial knowledge of their ‘faith’?
Anne Quast
Yup!
If Paul had a vision of Jesus, it would normally mean that he recognized something, based on prior knowledge of him. Do you think that Paul had actually seen him alive once, let’s say in the temple area during a festival? Can 2 Corint 5:16 be taken as a hint about this?
No, it’s like people who have visions of Jesus today. How do they know it’s not one of his brothers, e.g.?
Probably because they have been exposed to images of Jesus since early childhood. Their visions are like those images. Paul did not have anything like that.
Sorry for the cynical outlook but that makes me wonder; do people who have visions of Jesus today see a Jew, or do they see that Western European guy in the picture frame of my Sunday school?
Ha! They probably see all sorts of Jesuses…
Once again, I am moved to comment on your comment, “I have no problem calling the earliest followers of Jesus who came to believe in his resurrection ‘Christian’.” Earlier, you would say that you had no problem using “Christian” to refer to people who called themselves “Christian.” But to call those who continued to believe in Jesus as messiah after his death (and at least up to the time of Paul’s conversion) “Christian” is to impose it on people who did not call themselves “Christians” (as far as we know).
Historians do not simply call people what they called themselves! (how many gentiles would say “I’m a gentile”?)
Good point. Thanks. I finally came to an understanding in another post about your reasons for calling the the believers after Jesus’ death “Christians.” Took me a long time.
As you predicted: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-evidence-suggests-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-papyrus-a-forgery_us_5762f27ae4b05e4be8612c48?ir=WorldPost§ion=us_world&utm_hp_ref=world
It is interesting that Paul, himself, does not fully describe his conversion experience. Hmmm?
My hunch is that his readers knew it well (I wouldn’t be surprised if he had told it to them ad nauseum!)
From your work How Jesus Became God (as I understand it at least), you explain that, based on the fallible nature of human source-monitoring, the emotional state of his early followers basically set the stage for their future, nonveridical vision of a risen Jesus – i.e., that their early fervent belief in Jesus (while he was living), essentially created an ideal psychological environment for an emotional, pre-vision critical mass state such that having a vision of a risen Jesus after his crucifixion is plausible, if not somewhat likely, especially since Jesus isn’t your average grandmother or brother (no disrespect intended), for example. In this assessment, the followers are assumed to have a very positive emotional alignment with Jesus. In Paul’s case (pre-conversion), he obviously had the opposite emotional alignment, including active persecution. Do you have any thoughts on why Paul may have had a vision of a risen Jesus?
Yeah, I think it’s hard to psycho-analyze him, having so little information. Some kind of insight blind=sided him, whether it was driven by guilt or by something else….
It’s clear that Paul didn’t want or expect to see Jesus in any sense for obvious reasons, but it’s often stated that the original disciples didn’t expect to see him either (they clearly wanted to see him—but how could they—he died in public humiliation). What are the historical reasons for believing they didn’t expect to seem him again?
I assume it’s 1) the known first century various expectations of the Jewish Messiah—none of them expected a crucified Messiah. And 2) the gospels make it clear they didn’t expect to see him. Are those the only two reasons?
And what makes the gospel’s account here historical vs. theological? Criterion of embarrassment and dissimilarity come to mind… and it’s the only thing that explains their sudden and novel message… but I want to know your thoughts.
Also, what about 2 Cor. 12? Is Paul not referring to his conversion?
Too many quesitons! I’m not sure what you’re asking, bottom line. They probably didn’t expect to see him after he died since no one expects to see someone after they die. 2 Cor. 12: I’m not sure.
Another quick question (I couldn’t find this in the archives). We often hear Revelation’s prohibition against “pharmakeia” has to do with drugs. Is this really the first century meaning? Or is this an anachronism because of our English word Pharmacy? “What did it mean back then?” is my underlying question. THANK YOU!
Sorry — I’m on the road and don’t have any of my books with me. But my sense is that the English word pharmakeia comes from the Greek word for drug.
Is this in response to the wave of YouTube videos about the dangerous drug Flakka? My roommate is a Christian who usually is not caught up in fads, but I could see this one effected him.
Here is a link to Biblehub which shows dozens of translations that never thought to translate Pharmakeia to drug. Rather it was translated to demon or sorcery. https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Revelation%2018%3A23
Also, here is Strong’s web address on the word in question. http://biblehub.com/greek/5331.htm
I do not see any translators choosing to use the word “drug” or “poison” in their translation. I assume this is because sorcery and witchcraft fit better in the context.
I”m back to my books and looked up the word in the standard (major) ancient Greek lexicon. Yes, it does usually mean drug/healing remedy; it can sometimes mean “poison” as well.
Would you say beyond any doubt (with 100% ceartainty) that Paul either had a hallucination of Jesus or that he actually saw him?
I would say that there is very, very little in early Xty that is 100% certain.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s crystal clear that he believed he did see Jesus. This was a very convenient claim for him. My belief is that somehow or other he came upon Peter and the other members of what is called traveled from place to place seeking work. When he came upon Peter, James and the others, he thought they had a pretty good story and it could be saleable, but there were too many inconvenient conditions, not least of which was circumcision, particularly of adults. He told Peter and the others they could expand their movement if they would leave out some of these inconvenient requirements. Peter, James, etc., told him Jesus would never go for that. When Paul persisted, they told him, you didn’t know Jesus, we did, and he would not have approved of what you are proposing. But now Paul had communed with Jesus when he was in heaven. Paul told the Jerusalem guys, you only knew him while he was alive, but I’ve been in direct communication with him in heaven! My knowledge and authority supersedes yours! Paul certainly made his version work–probably better than he ever expected. How could he know people were going to collect his letters and ordain them as scripture?
Paul mentions in I Corinthians 15 that Jesus was buried. Why isn’t that reason enough to believe Jesus wasn’t thrown into a mass grave?
Being tossed into a mass grave *was* a burial.
I think you said before that Acts’ description of Pentecost is not considered historically accurate. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 16:8 that he was staying at Ephesus until Pentecost. Other than Acts, how can we know what Pentecost was even about?
It was an annual Jewish festival described in the Hebrew Bible.
if it was a festival then does that mean jewish christians were participating in animal sacrifices?
It is often thought so.
The Torah prescribes three pilgramage festivals for the Israelites: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Pentecost), and Sukkot (Tabernacles.) Each of the three festivals focused on a category of product that was traditionally ready for market during that time of year. For Passover it was livestock, so the first-born of the new year was brought to the cities for sale in the markets, and that’s why on Passover livestock (principally a lamb) were sacrificed. For Tabernacles (Sukkot) the products were fruits that had ripened over the summer, and the makeshift booths (the so-called Tabernacles or Sukkahs) represented the merchants who set up shop in the cities to sell their fruit. And for Pentecost (Shavuot) the product was the first gleaning of the crop harvest. In other words: Passover for animals, Pentecost for wheat, and Sukkot for fruits. Shavuot in Hebrew means “[Feast of] Weeks” because it always fell exactly seven weeks after Passover — making it a week of weeks, so to speak — and the Greek word Pentecost itself means “The Fiftieth Day”, because fifty is a rounding of the forty-nine days (called the omer in Hebrew) leading up to Shavuot plus the day, and Greek speaking Jews outside of Judea would refer to Shavuot as Pentecost, hence the name found its way into the Book of Acts and, subsequently, into the Christian calendar. That’s the original significance behind Pentecost. Hope that helps.
Yes, thank you! I was taught something entirely different about the subject of Pentecost.
Looking at it technically, everyone would be considered buried. But from a human perspective, it wouldn’t be considered a burial. Considering how ancient people focused so much on attaching meaning to physical acts, (David Lambert’s thread on repentance and your post on homosexuality and males being the submissive sex partner) tossing someone into a mass grave would have meaning too–the physical act of being denied a burial. You don’t think that’s possible?
My sense is that we don’t know what Paul thought or “knew,” but for him the fact that Jesus was in some sense was important *principally* because it showed the he really died, just as his appearances were important principally because they showed that he had really been raised.
Would it be fair to state that Paul’s literal and unsophisticated interpretation if not misinterpretation of a mystical experience created the link between Jesus’s death and resurrection?
I don’t think so. My sense is that people had made the link before Paul came on the scene. (They too had visionary experiences, and I suppose those led to the link)
Oh this is interesting. Where are the accounts from others? I would like to read. Then let me broaden my question .. would it be fair to state that early Christians’ literal and unsophisticated … etc. ?
The apostles see Jesus in the Gospels, as do the women. I’m not sure that visionary experiences are necessarily unsophisticated….
Let me clarify .. visionary experiences certainly aren’t unsophisticated. Authentic ones/on the contrary. But the interpretation can be unsophisticated and it reads to me that Paul as well as the Disciples interpreted and maybe misinterpreted the experience literally. This is a question: ).. and yes after more thought late at night I recalled the visitation to the Disciples .. and women?? This I don’t recall. Apologize for errors …. trying to type rapidly before the internet gives way.
My sense is that people who have visions of the deceased almost *always* think the person really is alive in some way.
Paul’s letters were never intended for our eyes. It’s like we’re listening to one side of someone else’s conversation but we don’t know what they’re talking about.
Right. I sometimes tell my students that they’re reading someone else’s mail….
Great minds…. 😉
http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2011/11/04
So one night in college a close friend and I had taken a controlled substance. I was standing in my dorm room looking at one of my Roger Dean posters listening to Pink Floyd, when I saw a hill before me with dozens of Crosses on it. There was one higher than all the others and I was sure it was Jesus on it. I looked down at my hands and both my wrist were bleeding from nail holes.
A moment later my friend said something to me and the vision was gone. I told him the story, and we both agreed it was one of the better moments of being high. I never viewed it as religious, just a reflection on all the research and reading I was doing at the moment. Delirium, dreams, sickness, Epilepsy, Drugs, and near death can all induce visions of fantastic things.
Hi Bart
How do we know for certain that Paul had his experience 2 to 3 years after the crucifiction. What evidence do we have for this? Is there any non biblical sources? I see many reference these years but I don’t hear them producing any evidence.
No, there aren’t any extra=biblical sources of any use. Paul makes several off-the-cuff comments about “three years later I did this” and “x years later I did that,” and it is usually thought that he has no agenda he’s trying to serve in these comments. If you can arrange the letters in a sensible sequence and add of the years of this that and the other thing, you can get a pretty good basic picture of the essential chronology. But there are lots of difficult issues involved. If you want to see one recent attempt, look at the book on Pauline chronology by my colleague at Duke, Douglas CAmpbell.
Dr Ehrman –
I realize this is an ancient post, but I was looking up info on Paul, and my googling led me here…
Now, about this: “The other problem is that most of the details in the accounts of Acts, contradictory or not, are absent from Paul’s own maddeningly terse description of what happened: he makes no references to being on the road to Damascus, being blinded by the light, falling to the ground, or hearing Jesus’ voice. The reason he provides no detail is not difficult to discern: the recipients of his letters had surely heard lengthy and gratifyingly full descriptions of the event in their earlier converse with Paul when he had first shared with them his gospel message, and for a long time after. But as outsiders we have been largely left in the dark.”
Many times, I have seen you (and a great number of other skeptics and scholars) remark how Paul never makes mention of an “empty tomb”… Or, of the virgin birth, or of much of a great deal about the “life and times” of Jesus.
Yet, in those cases, it is always used to push an argument that Paul knew little or nothing of the historical Jesus.
But here, in this quote above, you seem to employ a double-standard: Paul makes no mention of his Damascus road experience, yet, *The reason he provides no detail is not difficult to discern: the recipients of his letters had surely heard lengthy and gratifyingly full descriptions of the event in their earlier converse with Paul when he had first shared with them his gospel message, and for a long time after.”
Arguments that Paul doesn’t talk about the historical Jesus – because, after all, his audiences were *already* Christian, thus, had already *heard* the story of the historical Jesus – are very easily dismissed by you.
So, why the double standard?
I try not to embrace double standards!! Arguments from silence have to be made very carefully. The only reason for thinking that an author’s silence is significant is if there were *reasons* from his writings to think that he almost certainly would have mentioned something at this or that point of particular relevance to his argument/thought that in fact he does not mention. Given his style of argumentation/reasoning, if he had knowledge of this that or the other thing, and had perfect reasons to want to use that knowledge to make his point, why doesn’t he? I explain all this in relation to Paul’s knowledge of the traditions about Jesus in my textbook on the New Testament, in a section on Paul and Jesus in a chapter called “Did the Tradition Miscarry?”
re: ” I explain all this in relation to Paul’s knowledge of the traditions about Jesus in my textbook on the New Testament, in a section on Paul and Jesus in a chapter called “Did the Tradition Miscarry?”
Dr Ehrman, your positions are clear enough:
Paul doesn’t write about his conversion because “everybody already knew the story”.
Paul doesn’t write about the “empty tomb” because *he* doesn’t know about it — rather than “…because everybody already knew the story”.
I’m sure you have an explanation for your view.
I, too, have an explanation for mine: If neither Paul nor his audience already *knew* the “Jesus story”, then Paul’s own “conversion story” could have no relevance at all to anybody. Why should an onlooking Hindu care if Paul changed his mind about whether Jesus was Messiah if the Hindu has no idea who Jesus was in the first place? It would be of no significance to that onlooking Hindu at all. So, Paul’s own conversion story – which you believe “everybody” (speaking colloquially) already knew – could be of relevance *only* to them that already knew the “Jesus story”.
And, that’s the very reason I think it’s far more likely that “everybody” already knew the Jesus story – including the empty tomb. Hence, there was no reason at all for Paul to recite a history that everyone already knew, when Paul could introduce the topic of resurrection by simply quoting an established creed, rather than going into lengthy detail of what that creed was based on. Everybody already *knew* the “story”. What they *didn’t* know – and what Paul was trying to explain – was the nature of resurrection itself.
I suppose I just don’t need an entire chapter of a book to explain my view… Probably why I’m not a writer… 🙂
No, that’s not my view. I don’t know if Paul knew any tradition about an empty tomb. If he didn’t know, and heard about it, my view is that he would not have been surprised.
It definitely makes sense that Paul saw or experienced something that convinced him to reshape his faith convictions. Just to say that Paul made up the Christian doctrines fails to give a plausible reason for why a devout Jew, persecutor of the Christian sect would do such a thing. Many devout Christians would say the conversion of Paul is a strong proof of the Christian faith. But given Paul’s early conversion, so much of what we know about the teachings of Christianity yet were not even true. To be a proto-orthodox believer of Christ involved accepting what? What creeds were in circulation before Paul’s writings? How would you answer people who say Paul’s conversion is a strong proof for the validity of Christianity? Paul experienced some kind of hallucination, reflected and studied based on what he experienced, and came out a different man of faith. One of my guesses is standing and watching Christians martyred may have had a deeper impact on Paul than we realize by just reading the narratives. Even if the narrative of Stephen’s martyrdom is not historically reliable, Paul must have been involved in the persecution or even execution of some Christians based on his own testimony.
I agree that we simply do not know just what proto-Christianity or Christianity or something short of Christianity might have looked like at the time of Paul’s vision. We could just take Paul at his word when he says that he received the Gospel from those who came before him but, frankly, I don’t trust Paul. (As far as I’m concerned, his vision could have been one of a way to lead a new cult of his own shaping. ) When Paul refers to the Church of God, he does not spell out what its beliefs were. Even if a group of Jews simply believed Jesus was the messiah in spite of his crucifixion, that might have been enough to outrage some Jews and cause them to persecute the group. But, if that describes the beliefs of those Paul persecuted in the beginning, it could hardly be called a Christian group. Believing after his death that Jesus being the messiah doth not a Christian make, it seems to me.
“Either way, it is clear as crystal that he believed he did see Jesus. And that radically affected his thinking.”
I do not find it “as clear as crystal” that “[Paul] believed he did see Jesus”. There is a third possibility: he made the whole thing up.
Why would he do such a thing? Well, it is easy to grasp once you realize he was an enemy of the new faith.
There are at least different ways for someone to express their enmity to a new faith. One way is to openly persecute it, which is what Paul did to the followers of Jesus to begin with; another way is to pretend to be a sincere convert, and then work to undermine the new faith from the inside. The latter path has been pursued many times in history, obviously enough. Why couldn’t it be that Paul was always a persecutor of the Christian faith, but simply changed his “game plan”? In other words, what is so strange about the idea that, rather than physically assaulting and arresting followers of Jesus, Paul decided to undermine their religion by spreading his own special version of it, by posing as a “former-enemy-turned-miraculous-convert”?
Yup, that’s a possibility. THere are hundreds of other possibilities — eg., that Paul didn’t really exist but someone made *him* up. But I don’t think they are persuasive. For me, it is clear as crystal that Paul did not intentionally make it up. But one person’s crystal is another person’s mud.
Prof. Ehrman,
Peter preached (mainly) to the Jews, and Paul was commissioned to preach (mainly) to the Gentiles: “God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews” (Galatians 2:7, NLT).
Roughly speaking, Christianity began as a movement within Judaism. As far as I know, Jews have never had before ambitions to convert Gentiles to Judaism. It seems strange to me that they started to convert Gentiles to their new Judaistic movement. So what is the real historical motive behind preaching to the Gentiles? What is the historical explanation for the fact that the early Christians (Jewish Christians as Paul) preached to the Gentiles? Why did the Gentiles become target group for the new judaistic movement? Is it a kind of Jewish “spiritual expansion” over the Gentiles, an ambition to preach their God to other nations? Please, tell me your opinion with a short argumentation.
My sense is that Paul was influenced especially by Isaiah 40-55 that speaks about Israel being a “light to the gentiles,” who would flock to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel. The Jews were “chosen” in part to bring salvation to the entire world. And Paul came to see that this would happen through the messiah Jesus, who made it possible for everyone to be right with God without following the laws of Judaism.
Such an elementary question, but I don’t know if I’ve seen an answer to this from you and I’ve been searching: did Paul think that Jesus physically appeared to Paul, or was Paul’s conversion vision thought more of a spiritual or even vision by Paul?
Paul speaks of it as a physical reality.
Professor Ehrman, I have never fully understood what Paul means by his persecution of Christians before he converted. Though this is obviously an anachronistic analogy, I am reminded of modern Christian apologists who talk about how they “persecuted” Christians when they were an atheist but then converted. I’m guessing this is to show how miraculous them converting to Christianity is. But when they actually explain “persecuting” Christians, they basically just describe being a jerk to Christians online and being a fervent atheist, who denied God and disagreed with Christians. Obviously persecution meant something more extreme back then, but what would that actually look like for Paul? Outside of just opposing them ideologically.
If he was killing Christians or physically attacking them, was that just allowed in the Roman empire? I thought legally it was only justified to be jailed or crucified for opposing the state, not for beliefs. How could Paul get away with killing Christians legally and did Christians understand Paul to be someone who killed followers of Jesus?
More specifically, the Greek word Paul uses for “persecution”, does he, or others from antiquity, use this word, and what is it like in those contexts? Thanks.
I wish I knew too! He says he was trying to destroy the church (that’s his phrased: “destroy”) and that makes one think that violence was involved. He almost certainly wasn’t killing anyone, since that would be illegal. My guess is that he was either rousing up synagogues to punish the offenders (as happened to him personally, later) or he was just taking people out and beating them up. I have to say, I rather prefer the latter option. It would certainly cast an interesting light on Paul. But, well, we don’t know.
Regarding your assertion that “he indicates at the end that after his sojourn to Arabia – by which he does not mean the desserts of Saudi Arabia”
Do we have explicit, reliable evidence that Paul did not, in fact, partake of any of the desserts of Saudi Arabia? (Some of them are quite tasty.) 🙂
I think contextual credibility would suggest that he had a strong preference for baklava.
So, then it *is* possible that Paul might have had an encounter with the divine.
If he only had chocolate….