So Paul talks about his conversion in his 7 authentic letters. It’s not in much detail as it is in Acts. But for Acts, there’s some inconsistencies in this story.
For instance:
This presents some problems. According to Paul’s own letters, he was a Pharisee, whereas the High Priest in Jerusalem would have been a Sadducee. Pharisees and Sadducees were ideological opposed to one another. In addition, Pharisees looked on Sadducees as collaborators and hypocrites for siding with Roman oppressors as a way to keep their power and authority. It is highly unlikely a Sadducee High Priest would give any sort of authority to a Pharisee. In addition, it is very unlikely that a High Priest in Judea would even have any authority in Syria, let alone be able to arrest people there, and bring them back to Judea. It is also difficult to imagine, how Paul would be able to find these Christians, let alone manage to get them back to Jerusalem (150 miles {240 km} away) in some sort of “chain gang”.
Also this:
Even more confusing is the mention of King Aretas having a Governor in Damascus. If Paul was referring to King Aretas IV, who was the King of the Nabataeans between 8 BCE and 40 CE, then it is odd because King Aretas IV never had any control over Damascus. (This is debated by scholars, with some saying King Aretas maybe had control of Damascus in 37 CE). A possible solution to this confusion, is that Paul just made the whole thing up. He may have been trying to suggest that his preaching caused such consternation that even the Governor of such a large city as Damascus wanted him dead.
Bart Ehrman states:
They couldn’t empower him to do that. So that can’t be right. It is more likely something akin to news reaches Jerusalem that a few Christians are in Damascus creating issues in the synagogue there. Paul is on a mission from some religious authorities to reassure the Damascus Jews, carry a message from the Temple to make sure they towed the official line and, perhaps, to try and get the civil authorities involved to do something about the Christians as distuberers of the peace. This didn’t need to be 100’s of Christians, just a few causing problems might be enough to cause Jerusalem to act – especially if they saw it spreading.
This would be consistent what Paul himself writes (probably sometime in the 50’s).
Vs. All the details in Luke/Acts accounts where virtually all of the details come from, written ~20-40 years later, definitely not by Paul. We know Luke doesn’t seem to always actually reflect what Paul himself says about his life, mission and theology (e.g. parts of his journeys, what he preached etc.)
https://retellingthebible.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/5-4-the-basket-case/
- This podcast lists some inconsistencies:
- Paul repeatedly insists in his letters that he ought to be counted as one of the apostles. But the Acts explicitly limits the company of the apostles to twelve. It specifies that any apostle much be, “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” (See Acts 1:12-26). The Acts does twice refer to Paul and Barnabas as apostles in Acts 14:1-20, but is generally careful to place Paul in a different category from those it considers to be the legitimate apostles.
- Paul insists that his encounter with the risen Jesus, clearly one of the most important experiences in his life, was just like that of the others who saw him after he was raised. It was only different because of its timing. See 1 Corinthians 15:3-9. The Book of Acts, however, describes that key encounter as a vision that the other people who were present did not share in. The story is told three times in Acts 9:1-19, Acts 22:6-21 and Acts 26:12-18. It seems unlikely that Paul would have agreed to such a description of his experience.
- Paul also tells the story of the aftermath of his encounter with the risen Jesus quite differently. According to Acts 9:8-31, Paul went onto Damascus, stayed there “several days,” escaped the city in a basket and then went onto Jerusalem. According to Galatians 1:11-23, he stayed in Arabia for three years before going to Jerusalem.
These differences (among others) must make us question how we the author of the Book of Acts really knew Paul of Tarsus.
The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon(by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan) is a good book that talks about this.
Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists as well.
Schmiedel has proposed that the Aretas passage is a later interpolation, (Arretas is the one who allegding possesses Damascus).
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