aa5874

Galations 1.15-16, "But when it pleased God, who seperated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace.
To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood."

That's it! The conversion is completed according to "Paul". This conversion or perhaps revelation is completely devoid of details.

How did the author of Acts get his rendition of "Paul's conversion with flashing lights and being blinded by Jesus, sitting on the right hand of God, as described in Acts 9, Acts 22 and Acts 26.

Solitary Man

He embellished. Next question.

Malachi151

Either A: Total fabrication of the author
Or B: He based his story on some other baseless hearsay

aa5874

But, the rendition by the author of Acts has never been challenged by the Church fathers. Didn't anyone actually know"Paul" who would have immediately recognised that the conversion as written by the author of Acts was erroneous?

This "Paul" appeared to have lived in a vacuum. In the 85 chapters of "his" epistles, there is almost nothing about himself, his age, his family, where he lived, where and when he wrote, where and when he was imprisoned. "Paul" gave no details of his "missionary tours", no details about his miraculous escape from jail or anecdotes of surviving shipwrecks.

The epistles of "Paul" lack any details about paganism or polytheism, none of the gods of the Romans, Greeks or of any other region, except of Judea, are mentioned. "Paul" appears to be ambiguous and arbitrary, the names affixed to the epistles seems intechangeable, that is, the name of any region could be assigned to any epistle.

How did the author of Acts manage to get details about "Paul" when "Paul" himself did not recall these details in "his" own epistles?

Diogenes the Cynic

Acts was written 30-40 years after Paul was dead and would have taken another decade to become circulated so the chances are pretty slim that anyone who had known Paul well or had heard any detailed, first-hand account of his conversionary experiences would have still been around to evaluate Acts. It's not impossible, but it would have been a pretty small pool of old timers who still remembered Paul by then. Even if a hypothetical acquaintance of Paul had been able to recognize that the story in Acts did not match Paul's own words, that doesn't mean his complaints or objections would be documented.
That's true, and it's frustrating for historians, but it's also the nature of the genre. The Pauline Epistles were essentially written sermons. How many sermons have you been to where the speaker goes into any detail about his personal biography?

aa5874

How do you know when "Paul" died?

There is no information from "Paul" about his age in the epistles. All we have from "Paul" is an indication when he might have been alive in 2 Corinthian 11.32-33, "In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of Damascus with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me.
And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall and escaped his hands."

There is virtually no information from "Paul" in his epistles about being imprisoned and sentenced to die. All we have from "Paul" are vague statements as in Ephesians 3.1, "... I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles.."
Ephesians 4.1, " I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord..."
Ephesians 6.20, " ....I am an ambassador in bonds...."
And in Philemon 1.9, "Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ."

What does "prisoner of Jesus Christ "really mean? Are these metaphors mis-interpreted as actual imprisionment? Where and when was he a prisoner of Jesus Christ? The epistles from "Paul" do not say.

I would imagine that the Chuches would have like to have known where he was imprisoned, when he would be released, the conditions of his imprisionment, the charges and details of his health and general well-being , yet all we have are ambiguous statements and useless clues from "Paul".

It appears to me that these epistles were not written to any Church, but merely to convince the readers of the same that someone was named "Paul".

Diogenes the Cynic

Ok, fair enough. I guess it would have been better to say that Acts was written 30-40 years after the Pauline Epistles are generally dated and, ipso facto, after Paul was active in his ministry. I did not intend to give the impression that I necessarily believe in any Pauline martyrdom traditions but I do think that the lack of any evidence that he had an active ministry after the 60's (and the fact that what Ehrman calls "proto-orthodox" Christianity had evolved considerably beyond its ostensible Pauline origins by the end of the 1st century), along with the fact that most pople just didn't live to ripe old ages in the ancient world is an indication that, one way or the other, Paul had shuffled off this mortal coil long before the Lucan-Praxian works were even written, much less before they acheived any widespread circulation. I'm not aware of much serious, scholarly contention that Paul survived even into the 70's, much less the turn of the century.
Those letters which are accepted as "authentic" in the Pauline corpus are fairly demonstrable as the work of a single author. Whether or not the author actually resembled the Saul/Paul character in Acts, the fact that the authentic corpus has a single author who identifies himself as "Paul" is sufficient to say there actually was a Paul, even if he is only defined as the author of the Epistles.

gstafleu

That condition would also be fulfilled if they were written by Marcion.

Gerard Stafleu

Diogenes the Cynic

Which would only mean that "Paul" was named Marcion. Mark Twain wasn't Mark Twain's real name either.

Having said that, I think the notion that Marcion "forged" the Pauline corpus is nonsense.

gstafleu

I'm not occupying a position here in either direction. Having said that, given the difficulty of dating Paul's letters, what is there to prevent us from positing Actean priority: first Acts, and then some Mark Twain writing the letters?

Gerard Stafleu