The Legend
of Paul's Conversion
We Have Ways of Making You Talk
One
reason it is so often difficult to tell whether, with a particular piece
of biblical narrative, we are dealing with history or fiction is that
stories appear in the Bible for their edifying and theological value.
Since the stories are not there simply to satisfy idle reader curiosity,
we cannot readily determine whether a given story has been remembered or
fabricated, or a bit of both. And in the nature of the case, it will
always be easier to show the unhistorical nature of a narrative than to
verify one as historical. For historical criticism scrutinizes; it
doubts; it holds the text's feet to the fire, rather like the evil
interrogator in the movies who must assume his captive has information,
that he is lying when he pretends not to know anything. Even though the
poor prisoner may, like Dustin Hoffman in The Marathon Man,
really know nothing, the interrogator must nonetheless assume he is
lying ("I'll ask you one more time..."). Even so, the biblical critic
may never be finally convinced his story is true even if God knows it to
be a factual account. It is a matter of the futility of trying to prove
a negative, in this case that the text is not a piece of fiction. At any
rate, the story of Paul's conversion (Acts 9, 22, 26) has been for many
hundreds of years both edifying (as a paradigm case of God's forgiving
grace even to the chief of sinners) and apologetically important
(miraculously proving the reality of the Risen Christ). As such it
naturally calls forth our suspicions. And if the critic is like a
merciless interrogator of texts, we may compare him with the picture of
Paul as a persecutor1 of the saints in the very story
we intend to subject to such cross-examination here.
Seeing
Double
To
suspect or reject the historical basis of the story of Paul's conversion
as we read it in Acts is certainly nothing new in the history of
scholarship. Indeed, one might have thought the issue settled long ago,
with a negative verdict, by Baur, Zeller, and Haenchen.2
The contradictions and implausibilities of the three linked episodes
(Paul's persecution after Stephen's stoning; his vision of the Risen
Jesus on the Damascus Road; and his catechism and baptism by Ananias)
are well known. To review just a few of them, and thus to beat a dead
horse, the Stephen martyrdom (as Hans-Joachim Schoeps,3
followed by Robert Eisenman,4 suggests) is a
fictionalization of the story of the martyrdom of James the Just in
similar circumstances (as one can still glimpse in Acts 7:52, "... the
Just One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered."). Luke's reduction
of the Jewish Sanhedrin to a howling lynch mob is not to be dignified
with learned discussion. Worse yet, Saul has been appended to the
narrative by means of a typical Lukan blunder. The Law mandated the
casting aside of the clothes of the one executed, not those of his
executioners, but Luke has Saul play coat-check for the mob. And then
Saul does not so much spearhead as personify the persecution, which, as
Haenchen notes,5 is primarily a piece of "darkness
before the dawn" hagiography anticipating the impending conversion of
the enemy of the faith. The whole church is supposedly dispersed,
jailed, or tortured into blaspheming Jesus, but the Apostles and myriads
of their followers remain unmolested all the way into chapter 21. Saul
obtains a hunting license from the high priest to persecute Jewish
Jesus-believers in Damascus, though in fact the jurisdiction of that
worthy extended into Damascus no more than did that of Quirinius into
Bethlehem.
That the
Damascus Road Christophany is the creation of Luke is evident, first,
from the fact that, for artistry's sake, he quite properly varied the
details between his three accounts, even as he had with his two accounts
of the Ascension, a full forty days apart. As James Barr said regarding
the latter case, a writer who is so little concerned for consistency
cannot very well have been striving for historical accuracy.6
Second, as Gerhard Lohfink notes, Luke's stories copy standard
scriptural type-scenes (to borrow Robert Alter's phrase).7
The scenes "work" because they prompt the reader to recall the biblical
prototypes. Since he offers them as transparent literary allusions, he
simply cannot have expected his readers to take such scenes as
historical reportage. And the Damascus Road episode certainly does
embody such a type-scene, the kind Lohfink calls the "double vision." In
such a sequence a heavenly visitant grants the protagonist a revelation,
adding that at the very same moment he/she is appearing to someone
elsewhere with instructions to meet/help the protagonist.8
A third reason, and the strongest of all, as we will see, is that, while
Paul's epistles provide nary a historical peg from which to hang the
Lukan tale, there are strikingly close literary prototypes on which Luke
seems to have drawn.
Paul's
Con/version
Lohfink
is willing to allow that "Probably a real narrative lies at the bottom
of it, but that is really not certain."9 Lohfink is
thinking of some version of at least an oral-traditional story depicting
Paul having a vision of Christ on the Road to Damascus, but why should
we assume this? Lohfink himself admits that Galatians 1:22-23 gives
little to build on. And it is not uncommon for exegetes to note how the
writings attributed to Paul really provide no parallel whatever to the
Damascus Road account. Paul claims in 1 Corinthians 9:1 to "have seen
the Lord" and in 1 Corinthians 15:8 that "he appeared also unto me," but
absolutely nothing is said as to the circumstances, or of any connection
to a religious conversion. Acts' account, of course, runs together the
rather different issues of Paul's conversion to Christ and his naming as
Apostle to the Gentiles; one cannot assume that any Pauline reference to
either must imply both. All Galatians 1:15-16 says on the matter is "he
who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his
grace, was pleased to reveal his son in me, in order that I might preach
him among the Gentiles..." Is there any echo or hint of the Damascus
Road story here? It is astonishing that Lüdemann can use the Lukan-derived
term "the Damascus experience" of this or any other Pauline text.10
On the contrary, unless we are determined to find the Damascus business
there, Galatians will naturally be read as speaking of no conversion at
all, but of a life-long religious commitment secured by divine fiat
before birth. At a subsequent point he was then "called by the grace" of
God to some form of ministry, which later still eventuated in the
showing forth to others of Christ's life within his poor mortal frame,
precisely as in 2 Corinthians 4:10; Galatians 3:1; 4:14.11
Does not
the famous soliloquy in Romans chapter 7 attest to something like a
transformative experience on the Apostle's part? As is well-known, this
text is susceptible to too many viable interpretations, some of which
will rule out the use of the passage as Pauline autobiography. Paul may
rather be using "I" like the rhetorical "one." The same difficulty
attaches to two other passages (Rom. 6:3 and 1 Cor. 12:13) which may
also be taken as instances of Paul's rhetorically associating himself
with his audience. But if they are read as references to Paul's own
baptism, he would seem to be presupposing anything but a unique mode of
entrance into the Christian community.12 Instead, he
can speak of sharing his readers' baptismal experience just as he
identifies by experience with the tongue-talking of the Corinthians (1
Cor. 14:18). One other bit of evidence pointing in this direction is
spotlighted by Anthony J. Blasi:
The
conversion account in the Acts of the Apostles presents a dramatic scene
in which the risen Jesus knocks Paul off his horse13
on the road to Damascus and talks to Paul. None of this appears in the
Pauline letters, however. Rather, we learn that "kinsmen" of Paul's were
also apostles. In a letter of recommendation for the deaconess [sic;
actually "deacon"], Phoebe, which is attached to the end of Romans, Paul
notes that his kinsmen, Andronicus and Junias [sic: Junia], "are... of
note among the apostles, and they were in Christ before me" (Rom. 16.7).14
Here we
overhear Pauline table talk to the effect that, like many present-day
ministers, he is proud to hale from a family of previous ministers, and
this hardly comports with the traditional picture of Paul radically
turned about in his tracks, rescued like a brand from the burning by the
miraculous intervention of Christ.
I
suggest a comparison here between the case of Paul and his legend and
that of Gautama the Buddha. Later hagiographical texts tell the edifying
tale of the Great Renunciation of Prince Siddhartha, who abandoned the
opulence of his father's imperial palace to seek the solution to
mankind's ills. It came about in this wise. Miraculous portents revealed
to King Suddhodana that his newborn son should grow up to be either the
world's redeemer or its conqueror. Being a mighty man of war, the king
set about to make sure his son would follow in his bloody footsteps.
This he did by shielding the boy from the knowledge that the world
needed redemption. Prince Siddhartha lived a happy life roaming the
extensive grounds and game preserves of the royal estate, never gaining
a glimpse of human misery, never suspecting the woeful truths of pain,
old age, infirmity and death. This way, his father reasoned, he should
know nothing of the world's need till irrevocably committed to the
warrior's path. But it was not to be. The gods themselves saw to it that
the Prince's eyes should be opened: they took turns dropping down to
earth in human form, one each day, disguised as a sufferer of illness,
an old man, a fly-buzzing corpse, and at last a mendicant monk. Each day
the Prince saw one, to the great consternation of his guardians. Thus
did he learn of sickness, old age, and death, and much did he meditate
until the fourth day when he beheld the monk and saw his own way
pointed. Abandoning sleeping wife and children, leaving a stricken
father shaking his crown-heavy head, Siddhartha Gautama launched into
the jungle and began his search for enlightenment. The story is
exceedingly rich in symbolism and implications, much like the story of
Paul's conversion, when the scales of unbelief fell from his eyes. But
the judgment of Edward J. Thomas15 is that the story
is groundless and secondary. Now it may seem that this is to state the
obvious, but that is only because we are used to taking New Testament
supernaturalism for granted and it does not occur to us to take Buddhist
miracle stories seriously.
One
might seek to historicize the Great Renunciation by rationalizing,
demythologizing it. One might envision the Prince rudely awakening from
a pampered life (though without the fairy-tale luxury of the full-blown
myth) by the unexpected sight of a genuine sufferer, elder, corpse, and
monk, and undertaking an ascetic life himself. And some historians of
Buddhism have made these adjustments if by these means they might
salvage some of the story as historical. We may trace a striking
parallel in the case of the legend of Paul's conversion. Many have been
willing to rationalize the story if they may thus by bargaining strike a
deal between the historian and the believer within themselves.16
Perhaps Paul had an hallucination, yes, an hallucination brought on by a
deep crisis of conscience over his participation in the death of
Stephen. Perhaps he even secretly coveted the freedom from the Law that
Stephen stood for. He was "persecuting" his own secret desire to be a
Christian. And on the Damascus Road his conscience and desire erupted
from his subconscious in the form of the Risen Christ to assure him his
sin was forgiven and his desire granted. Despite the fact that this
reconstruction ignores all the problems attending the Stephen and the
Damascus Road stories, it has not lost its popularity. For instance,
Gerd Lüdemann dusted it off in his recent book on the resurrection.17
But
rationalizing either story is only a stopgap. We need only invoke the
fundamental historical-critical axiom that in any choice between a more
and a less spectacular version of the same event, the less spectacular
is to be preferred, since if the more colorful were first available we
cannot account for the fabrication of the more mundane. But if only the
less spectacular were first available, we can well imagine someone
replacing it with a more dramatic one. Accordingly, Thomas shows that
any hypothesized version of the Great Renunciation story collapses when
placed next to this passage from scripture:
Thus, O
monks, before my enlightenment, while yet a Bodhisattva and not fully
enlightened, being myself subject to birth I sought out the nature of
birth, being subject to old age I sought out the nature of old age, of
sickness, of death, of sorrow, of impurity. Then I thought, "What if I
being myself subject to birth were to seek out the nature of birth
[etc.] and having seen the wretchedness of the nature of birth, were to
seek out the unborn, the supreme peace of Nirvana?" (The Sutta of the
Noble Search)
Thomas
concludes, "In these accounts we have no definite historical
circumstances mentioned, nor any trace of the legend as we find it in
the commentaries and later works. These have elaborated a story... based
upon the abstract statements of the earlier texts."18
It seems to me that exactly the same relationship obtains between the
more general language of passages like Galatians 1:15-16 and 2
Corinthians 4:6 and the miracle-mongering narrative of Paul's conversion
as we read it in Acts.
Similarly, the canonical account of Joseph Smith's initial vision of
Jesus and the heavenly Father in the Sacred Grove at Palmyra seems to be
a secondary mythologization of an earlier process of introspective
contemplation. According to the official version, in 1820 young Joseph
found himself confused by the strife between local Protestant sects: the
Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians--which should he join? Retreating to
the woods to think and pray, he beheld an epiphany of the Father and the
Son who had come to tell him that his suspicions were well-founded: none
of the competing sects was right. And he himself had been chosen to
restore true Christianity to the world. Shortly thereafter, the angel
Moroni appeared to Joseph, directing him to unearth the Book of Mormon.
Strangely, this account of the revelation was unknown to Mormons and
non-Mormon polemicists alike until Smith first recounted it in 1842. But
according to Joseph's mother Lucy, their family had been discussing the
relative merits of the competing sects at home one evening. Joseph went
to bed, only to be awakened by an angel. The heavenly messenger told him
that none of the churches was right: he ought to start a new one. It is
apparent that Joseph later split this version of the story into two, for
greater effect. But in an 1832 account by Smith himself he claimed that
well before he had beheld any vision, it had been his own studies of the
Bible that had convinced him that none of the contemporary churches was
scripturally authentic.19 It is apparent that his own
inner theological musings gradually became externalized, with the help
of legendary embellishment, and the result was a legendary conversion
narrative.
The
story of Paul's Damascus Road conversion can no more be salvaged by
rationalizing historicization than that of the Great Renunciation of the
Buddha or the visions of Joseph Smith. All alike are midrashic
narratizations of earlier, less spectacular, autobiographical musings.
Damascus
Covenant
I have
noted the tendency, even among critical scholars (as witness Lüdemann)
who ought to know better, and who indeed do know better, to discount
Luke's story of Paul's conversion in Acts as myth and/or fiction and yet
in effect to continue presupposing the substance of it to be
historically true. Chronologies are based on the conversion of Paul,
despite the dearth of evidence for it. It is simply too much trouble to
think through the implications, the redrawing of the rules that might
become necessary. It is quite as unthinkable for them to let go the "Big
Bang" model of Pauline origins as it is for them to dispense with what
Burton Mack20 calls the "Big Bang" model of Christian
origins in general. If, as Mack suggests, the Big Bang of
cross-and-resurrection is merely one subsequent version of the multiform
myth of Jesus, and we must shake off its spell and try to get behind the
Easter morning faith of the disciples,21 the need is
just as serious to get behind the legend of Paul's conversion if we wish
to come to a better understanding of the evolution of the Pauline
movement.
James
D.G. Dunn's discussion22 of various theories seeking
to derive Paul's theology directly from his conversion experience on the
Damascus Road is instructive in ways he may not intend. Some have
proposed that Paul drew primarily a Christological inference from his
vision: even though Jesus was a transgressor of the Torah, here he is
resurrected, so it turns out he was the messiah after all. Others
suggest Paul drew primarily a legal inference: if the Torah (shorthand
for "works-righteousness") condemned the likes of the now-vindicated
Jesus, then so much for the Torah. Dunn himself finally settles upon the
nuance that Paul inferred from his vision the need for a Gentile
mission: if a Law-transgressing Jesus was vindicated by the
resurrection, then God has exercised his preferential option for the
scofflaws, i.e., the Gentiles. In all this, Dunn is worried about how
Paul could have inferred either God's saving grace or Jesus' messiahship
or the Gentile Mission from the Damascus Road encounter, i.e., on the
spot. Dunn complains that previous theories do not comport with
Paul's (supposed) claim in Galatians 1:15-16 (which Dunn, needless to
say, interprets a la Acts 25:17-18, as a reference to the Damascus Road)
to have received his commission to the Gentiles "the hour I first
believed."23 Never mind that Dunn's theory is the
lamest of the lot, what has he shown? Mainly, the fact that exegetes can
take such theological midrash as historical reconstruction shows that
they find it all too easy to directly assimilate the Lukan conversion
story (to which they are at least implicitly referring) as a piece of
narrative theology, that is, narratized theology. They seem not
to notice they have passed, with Luke, from the domain of historical
explanation to that of midrash.24 It is not that they
miss Luke's point. No, they are on precisely his wavelength. It just
isn't history. Dunn's "historical" reconstruction, even more than those
he criticizes, leaves no room for a man hammering out his theology as
need and new questions arose. Luke's picture of Paul receiving his
gospel in one gulp on the road to Damascus is the same sort of
theological cameo as the story where Moses gets the whole darn Torah on
Mount Sinai. Narratized theology, not history.
From
Paul's Biography to Luke's Bibliography
If there
is no graft point in the Pauline epistles for Luke's account of Paul's
conversion, where did Luke derive his inspiration? And why did he feel
the need to include such a scene? First, it seems plain, as soon as one
reads the texts in question, that Luke has borrowed freely from two
well-known literary sources, Euripides' Bacchae25
and 2 Maccabees' story of the conversion of Heliodorus. From 2 Maccabees
Luke has borrowed the basic story of a persecutor of the people of God
being stopped in his mission by a vision of heavenly beings (3:24-26),
thrown to the ground in a faint, blinded (3:27), and cared for by
righteous Jews who pray for his recovery (3:31-33), whereupon the
ex-persecutor converts to the faith he once tried to destroy (3:35) and
begins witnessing to its truth (3:36). Given Luke's propensity to
rewrite the Septuagint,26 it seems special pleading to
deny that he has done the same in the present case, the most blatant of
them all.27
From the
Bacchae,28 Luke has derived the core of the
Damascus Road epiphany, the basic idea of a persecutor being converted
despite himself by direct fiat of the god whose followers he has been
abusing. Pentheus has done his best to expel the enthusiastic Maenads of
Dionysus from Thebes, against the counsel of Cadmus, Teiresius, and
other level heads who warn him not to be found fighting against a god (Teiresias:
"Reckless fool, you do not know the consequences of your words. You
talked madness before, but this is raving lunacy!" 357-360. Dionysus: "I
warn you once again: do not take arms against a god." 788-789. "A man, a
man, and nothing more, yet he presumed to wage war with a god." 636-637;
c.f., Acts 5:33-39). He ought to mark how the Maenads, though they may
seem to be filled with wine, are really filled with divine ecstasy
("not, as you think, drunk with wine," 686-687; c.f., Acts 2:15), as
witnessed by the old and young among them prophesying ("all as one, the
old women and the young and the unmarried girls," 693-694; c.f., Acts
2:17-18) and the harmless resting of tongues of fire upon their heads
("flames flickered in their curls and did not burn them," 757-758;
"tongues of fire," 623-624; c.f., Acts 2:3)! Pentheus remains stubborn
in his opposition, arresting the newly-arrived apostle of the cult, who
turns out to be Dionysus himself, the very son of god, in mortal
disguise. After an earthquake frees him from Pentheus' prison (585-603;
c.f., Acts 16:25-34), Dionysus strolls into Pentheus' throne room and
mocks him ("If I were you, I would... not rage and kick against
necessity, a man defying god." 793-796; c.f., Acts 26:14), offering
Pentheus the chance to find the outlaw disciples in their secret
hideaway. He may see them at their sport, but he must go in drag,
wearing their distinctive doeskin costume (912-916; c.f., Acts 9:26-30).
He mesmerizes Pentheus into agreeing to the plan (922-924; c.f., Acts
9:17-18), and no sooner does he prettify himself than he has become a
true believer despite himself (929-930). But the joke's on him, since
Dionysus sends him to his doom: he knows Pentheus will be detected and
torn limb from limb by the Maenads. Such poetic justice! The poor fool
could dish it out but not take it! He wanted to persecute the Maenads?
Let him! He'll see how it feels from the standpoint of the persecuted!
He becomes a true believer, only to suffer the fate of one. And so does
Paul. In light of the parallels with the Bacchae (Dionysus to
Pentheus: "You and you alone shall suffer for your city. A great ordeal
awaits you. But you are worthy of your fate." 963-964), we can at long
last catch the awful irony of Acts 9:16, "I will show him how much he
must suffer for the sake of my name!" Paul, a conscript despite himself,
will find his punishment fitting his crime: he will suffer as a member
of the same persecuted community against whom he himself had unleashed
the persecution.
Another
Jesus
As for
Luke's motive for the story, it is not far to seek. As is well known,
Luke in Acts parallels Paul not only with Peter, but with Jesus as well.
Luke's Paul goes about doing good, anointed with the Spirit, healing the
sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, preaching in synagogues,
finally making his way to Jerusalem like a moth to the flame. Passion
predictions adumbrate what will happen there, and after a tumult at the
temple, he is taken into custody, tried before the Sanhedrin, by
Herodian and Roman officials who all declare him innocent, and, it is
implied, he is killed (Acts 20:25; also compare Acts 21:11 with Luke
18:31-33). Lest there be a missing piece, Luke felt it needful to
include a scene corresponding to Jesus' baptism by John, the starting
point of his ministry (Luke 3:21-22). This is the function of the
Damascus Road and Ananias sequence. The idea of Paul meeting the Risen
One while traveling along a road comes from Luke's Emmaus story (Luke
24:13-33), and the encounter with "the Just One" (Acts 22:14) "whom you
are persecuting" (Acts 22:8 and parallels) probably derives from an old
story, echoed in the Clementine Recognitions, in which Paul
ambushes James the Just in the temple. But the sequence as a whole
parallels the baptism of Jesus by John. Why does Luke bother to tell us
that Paul was staying on the well-known "street called Straight" (Acts
9:11), if not to hint at John the Baptist's urging to "prepare the way
of the Lord and make his paths straight" (Luke 3:4)? Paul's vision of
Jesus reflects Jesus' own vision of the descending Spirit (Luke 3:22).
As Jesus receives the Spirit at his baptism, so does Paul at the hands
of Ananias (Acts 9:17). And Ananias even administers a baptismal rite
aimed at washing away sins (Acts 22:16), just as John does (Luke 3:3).
Finally, the very name Ananias (Hananiah, Hanan-yahu) is the merest
disguise for John (Yah-hannon), the theophoric suffix replacing the
identical prefix.
It is
worth speculating whether Luke may have had some Grundschrift
(underlying story) for the story of Ananias healing and baptizing Saul
of Tarsus, though an unexpected one. As J. Louis Martyn pointed out, the
story in John chapter 9 of the blind man healed by Jesus and being
excommunicated from the synagogue very likely reflects contemporary
Jewish controversies over whether Jews might accept the help of
Christian healers when all else failed. Martyn adduced two rabbinical
anecdotes.29
It
happened with Rabbi Elazar ben Damah, whom a serpent bit, that Jacob, a
man of Kefar Soma, came to heal him in the name of Yeshua ben Pantera;
but Rabbi Ishmael did not let him. He said, "You are not permitted, Ben
Damah." He answered, "I will bring you proof that he may heal me." But
he had no opportunity to bring proof, for he died. (Tosefta Hullin
2, 22)
The
grandson [of Rabbi Jehoshua ben Levi] had something stuck in his
throat. Then came a man and whispered to him in the name of Jeshu
Pandera, and he recovered. When he [the healer] came out, he [Rabbi
Jehoshua] said to him, "What didst thou whisper to him?" He said to him,
"A certain word [euphemistic for the Christian invocation of Jesus]." He
said, "It had been better for him that he had died rather than this."
And it happened thus to him. (j Shabbath 14d)
We see
here the Jewish horror at the prospect of Jews being converted to the
ranks of the Christian minim (heretics) by means of miracles. Why
would it have been better to die than to receive healing in the name of
Jesus Pandera? Because it would be to commit one of the three mortal
sins: one ought to die before committing idolatry, and that is what
conversion to the heathen demon Jesus would constitute. Note how the
first of the two cautionary tales warns the potential objector not even
to dare arguing the "wrong" side of the case lest disaster follow!
Apparently there was some kind of "ecumenical" healing bridge between
Jews and Jesus-sectarians, as witness also the striking inclusion of
Yochanan ben Zabda (= John son of Zebedee) alongside Asaph ben Berechiah
as a pair of physicians who frame a kind of Hippocratic Oath in the
Hebrew text Sefer Refuot (Book of Medicines), a text with Qumran
affinities.30
Is it
possible that Luke adapted a Jewish story which depicted a Jew, perhaps
named Saul, beset with sunstroke and blindness, accepting the healing
ministry of the Jewish Jesus-sectarian Ananias and, horror or horrors,
becoming one of the minim as a result? Originally the Saul and Ananias
story would have been a slightly different cautionary tale: look what
will happen--it won't stop at healing!
Paul the
Persecutor
The
reader has no doubt been asking whether the datum of Paul having
previously persecuted the church does not require some sort of
conversion episode, and of a rather drastic nature at that. If Paul
recalls his days of being a persecutor, does he need to make his
conversion explicit? I believe that every single one of the apparent
Pauline references to former persecution is secondary. As interpolations
or parts of pseudepigrapha, such references one and all presuppose the
same Pauline legend we read of in Acts.
First,
John C. O'Neill marshals a number of considerations indicating that
Galatians 1:13-14, 22-24 did not originally belong to the text of that
epistle. "These verses have been interpolated into Paul's argument by a
later writer who wished to glorify the apostle. The argument is
irrelevant and anachronistic, the concepts differ from Paul's concepts,
and the vocabulary and style are not his."31 "The
astounding reversal of roles he underwent, from a fierce persecutor of
the Church to an evangelist of the faith, and from a precociously
zealous Jew to an opponent of Jewish customs, is no argument in favour
of Paul's position,"32 which seems to be the thread
of the passage otherwise.
The
reference to "Judaism" is too late for Paul, since it implies that
Christianity and Judaism are separate religions, a use analogous to
speaking of "Judaism and paganism." Similarly,
pistiV
as a reference to "the faith," i.e., the Christian religion, would fit
in Acts 6:7 and the Pastorals, but not in Paul. And Paul elsewhere uses
the word
ekklhsia
for local congregations. The use in 1:13 (cf. 23) smacks rather of the
later Church Universal (or even Church Aion) doctrine of Ephesians. The
word
anastrofh
is elsewhere to be found over Paul's name only in Ephesians and 1
Timothy, while
IoudaismoV,
porqow,
sunhlikiwtaV,
and patrikoV
do not occur even there. The frequency of the enclitic (three
times) in these few verses is closer to that in Ephesians and the
Pastorals (seven) than the other Paulines (once more in Galatians 2:6,
nine times elsewhere in the Corpus). Stylistically these verses are
un-Pauline, the sentences even and regular, with 20, 19, 12, and 20
words respectively. And there is more.32
I have
argued at some length elsewhere33 that Winsome Munro,
J.C. O'Neill and others are quite correct in seeing 1 Corinthians
15:3-11, containing another reference to Paul's pre-conversion
persecutions, as an interpolation.
1
Timothy 1:13 contains another reference to the mischief wrought by the
pre-Christian Paul, but it is as spurious as the epistle which contains
it. The same goes for Philippians 3:6, "as to zeal, a persecutor of the
church." As Baur pointed out long ago, Philippians is virtually a fourth
Pastoral Epistle, with its anachronistic references to bishops and
deacons, the Gnosticizing kabbalism of the Kenosis hymn in 2:6-11, its
unusual vocabulary, and most of all, its heavy hagiographic irony as it
has Paul assure his readers that, though he would much rather wing his
way to glory and finally attain his crown of perfection, he will
continue to minister to them, which of course "he" does by means of this
very pseudepigraph. The poignancy depends completely, as it does for the
modern reader, on the implied reader knowing that Paul was in fact
executed immediately after "he" wrote these sweet sentiments. It is
another Acts 19, another 2 Timothy. So no wonder it, too, knows the
legend of Paul the persecutor. And note the anti-Semitism whereby it
equates Jewish zeal with Christian-hunting. Paul can have written this
no more than he can have regarded Judaism as a competing religion he did
not belong to (Gal. 1:14) or aimed at fellow Jews the classic
anti-Jewish jibe "haters of humanity" (1 Thess. 2:15--and here note yet
another variation on the Pauline persecution legend: this time it is
Palestinian Jews who persecuted Paul!).
Whence the Pauline
persecution legend shared by Luke and his fellow Paulinists? I believe
it is a late and garbled Gentile Christian version, a turning to
hagiographic advantage, of an early and persistent Ebionite reproach of
the Christian Paul as an "enemy of the faith," their faith, the
Torah-gospel of James the Just and the Nazoreans. In the Clementine
Recognitions34 we read of attacks led by Paul
("the Enemy") on James and his flock. These are actual physical attacks
upon James and the Jerusalem Ebionim, not unlike that attributed to Paul
and the Sanhedrin in Acts. But in the Ebionite source underlying this
episode of the Recognitions 35 it seems
doubtful that Paul's attacks presaged a conversion; he is referred to
uniformly as the Enemy of James throughout, as if nothing ever changed.
Now in fact the historical Paul may never have mounted violent attacks
on any group of rival religionists. “The legend of Paul’s persecution of
Christians… may have been invented by the Petrine party, as the
Paulinists invented the legend of Peter’s denial of his Lord.”36
Was it
cut from whole cloth? Not exactly. His reputation as one who, as a
non-Torah Christian, opposed the "true" (Ebionite) faith and
"fought" against it would have eventually crystallized into stories of
his actually taking up "worldly weapons of warfare" (2 Corinthians
10:4). But the original point was simply that Paul as a Christian
apostle strove, polemicized, against the Nazorean Christianity of James
and Peter. "They have heard concerning you that you teach all the Jews
who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to
circumcise their children or observe the customs" (Acts 21:21).
Naturally Gentile, Pauline Christians could never have interpreted his
promulgation of the Law-free gospel as opposing the true faith, so when
eventually they heard the charge that Paul had been an enemy of the
faith they took it to mean he had once persecuted what they
considered the true faith: their own Hellenized Christianity, which
must, in turn, have meant he had previously been a non-Christian and
then had undergone a major about-face.37
Conquer
By This
In
suggesting that there never was any sort of dramatic conversion of Paul
from a Jewish persecutor of Christians to a Christian believer and
apostle, I am floating a theory analogous to that of T.G. Elliott who
has recently argued that the famous story of Constantine converting to
Christian faith as a result of a heavenly token seen in a vision before
the Battle of the Milvian Bridge is a fabrication of Eusebius.38
It seems much more likely that Constantine had simply been raised as a
Christian. Originally the vision was supposed to be no more than the
origin of the symbolic battle standard, the labarum. Eusebius
initially treats the story of the vision this way, as do all other early
discussions of the vision. But eventually Eusebius introduces the notion
that the event marked the miraculous conversion of Constantine to the
Christian religion, and subsequent writers who make the claim owe it to
Eusebius. Elliott shows how, once we free ourselves of this bit of
hagiographic propaganda about Constantine, we find ourselves in a better
position to appreciate the mature, long-nourished convictions that led
the Emperor to involve himself in theological deliberations leading to
Nicea. Constantine appears less the meddling amateur theologian, just
as, without the Big Bang of the Pauline conversion, we can better
understand the gradual, contextual development of his convictions
without having to think the Risen Christ just unscrewed Paul's cranium,
dropped in a cassette, and pressed play.
The
utility of the miraculous conversion legend is obvious in both cases: it
serves the same purpose as the common assertions that founder-prophets
were unlettered: the eloquence of their revelations must then have come
from God, not from the founder's own imagination, however gifted. Moses
(Exod. 4:10-11), the Prophet Muhammad ("But I cannot recite!"), the
Prophet Joseph Smith, Peter and John (Acts 4:13), Jesus himself, all are
claimed never to have enjoyed formal schooling. "Where did he get all
this? What is the wisdom given to him? Is not this the carpenter?" (Mark
6:2-3) "How is it that this man has learning, having never studied?"
(John 7:15) The answer: "Flesh and blood has not revealed it to" him
(Matt. 16:17). It must be good news from God, not good views from human
beings.
Now
neither Paul nor Constantine could plausibly be depicted as uneducated,
so the metaphor is just slightly different: what if each, albeit
well-educated, was a non-Christian, in one case a pagan, in the other a
Jew, converted to the faith by a miracle? This means the views
subsequently propagated by them must be a gospel not from men or through
man (Gal. 1:1). "For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it,
but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ."
1. See
Page duBois, Torture and Truth (NY: Routledge, 1991): "Is our
very idea of truth... entwined with the logic of torture?" Pass me the
thumbscrews.
2.
Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life
and Works, His Epistles and His Doctrine. Trans. A. Menzies (London:
Williams and Norgate, 1876) vol. 2, pp. 42-89; Edward Zeller, The
Contents and Origin of the Acts of the Apostles, Critically Investigated.
Trans. Joseph Dare (London: Williams and Norgate, 1875) vol. 1, pp. 284
ff; Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary.
Trans. Bernard Noble, Gerald Shinn, and R. McL. Wilson (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1971), pp. 297-299, 318-329.
3.
Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums
(Tübingen: Mohr, 1949), pp. 408-445. Having experienced audience
reaction not unlike that accorded Stephen himself in the wake of this
published suggestion, Schoeps, in his 1969 popularization Das
Judenchristentum (Eng. trans. Jewish Christianity: Factional
Disputes in the Early Church by Douglas R.A. Hare, Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1969), decided only to hint at his theory "since all
theologians immediately see red when the historicity of the alleged
Hellenist deacon Stephen is questioned" (p. 43). Little has changed in
the interval, as the shocked and outraged reactions to Eisenman's
related conjectures have recently shown.
4.
Robert Eisenman, "Paul as Herodian," in Eisenman, The Dead Sea
Scrolls and the First Christians: Essays and Translations (Rockport:
Element Books, 1996), pp. 242-243; Ibid., James the Brother of Jesus:
The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea
Scrolls (NY: Viking Penguin: 1996), chapter 14, "The Stoning of
James and the Stoning of Stephen," pp. 411-466.
5.
Haenchen, p. 298.
6. James
Barr, Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), p. 57.
7.
Gerhard Lohfink, The Conversion of
St.
Paul: Narrative and History in Acts.
Trans. Bruce J. Malina (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1976), pp. 80
ff.; ibid., The Bible: Now I Get It! A Form-Criticism Handbook
(Garden City: Doubleday, 1979), pp. 123-124.
8.
Conversion, pp. 73-77. In fact, one may note the presence of the
same complex not only in the Bible but in Lucius Apuleius'
Metamorphosis or The Golden Ass, in which poor Lucius,
prototype for Francis the talking mule, beholds an epiphany of Isis, who
instructs him to appear on the morrow in Rome to her priest Mithras,
whom she is even now informing of the meeting. He will change Lucius
back to human form in preparation for Lucius' initiation into her saving
mysteries. This done, Mithras asks Lucius, "Why do you wait?" and
initiates him (Book XI). Here, as in Luke's account of Paul, a blatantly
metaphorical malady is healed preparatory to conversion-initiation, with
the rhetorical prompt "Why do you wait?" (see Acts 22:16), which Oscar
Cullmann long ago identified as a ritual cue (as also in Mark 10:14,
"hinder them not;" Acts 10:47, "Can anyone forbid water for baptizing
these people...?" Also Acts 8:36, "What doth hinder me to be baptized?"
Acts 11:17; Matthew 3:13-14); Cullmann, Baptism in the New Testament.
Studies in Biblical Literature No. 1. Trans. J.K.S. Reid (London: SCM
Press, 1952), Appendix: "Traces of an Ancient Baptismal Formula in the
New Testament," pp. 71-80.
9.
Lohfink, Conversion, p. 87.
10. Gerd
Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994), 50. He attempts to make the
theological language of 2 Corinthians 4:6 an echo of a visionary
experience on the way to Damascus. But if there is any relationship, the
details of 2 Corinthians 4:6 have surely suggested the Damascus Road
story. Lüdemann's suggestion must be judged an astonishing bit of
nostalgic harmonization.
11. It
is always possible to read the Galatians passage in a way that would
harmonize it with Luke's conversion tale, but this would be circular:
the point is to see first what the Galatians text would seem to imply
when read by itself. Only if it seemed problematical when read on its
own would we be entitled to search elsewhere for some unspoken, missing
premise. But if it makes sufficient sense as is, and obviously it does,
then there is no need to read Luke's story into it. And if anyone wishes
to nullify the natural implications of Galatians 1:15 by pointing out
its allusion to Jeremiah 1:5, let me just note that the latter even more
strongly envisions a continuous religious consciousness from early youth
("I am only a child."), not a drastic discontinuity or conversion.
12.
Reginald H. Fuller, "Was Paul Baptized?" Les Actes des Apôtres:
Traditions, rédaction, théologie par J. Kremer. Bibliotheca
Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium XLVIII (Gembloux: Leuven
University Press), p. 505. Fuller's article is pretty much a homiletical
haze from which no real answer to the eponymous question ever emerges.
13. Or,
better, on his ass.
14.
Making Charisma: The Social Construction of Paul's Public Image (New
Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1991), p. 26. One can always argue that
"kinsmen" here merely means "fellow Jews," but other Jews are mentioned
without such terminology. To distance his "kinsmen" from Paul in such a
manner is a leaf taken from the book of Roman Catholic apologists for
whom the brothers and sisters of Jesus must be his cousins, or whatever.
15.
Edward J. Thomas, The Life of Buddha as Legend and History
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1927), p. 52.
16. Van
A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: A Confrontation between
the Modern Historian's Principles of Judgment and the Christian's
Will-to-Believe (NY: Macmillan, 1969).
17.
Lüdemann, Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 81-84. This is only one
respect in which Lüdemann has retreated into nineteenth-century
rationalism and sentimentalism in The Resurrection of Jesus,
another being his Renan-like view that Jesus was resurrected into the
nostalgia of the Twelve (pp. 97 ff).
18.
Thomas, Life of Buddha, ibid.
19.
David Persuitte, Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., corrected 1991 edition), pp.
20-24.
20.
Burton Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 7-9, 112-113, 368.
21.
Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology.” Trans. Reginald H.
Fuller. In Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate. Ed. Hans
Werner Bartsch (NY: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1961), p. 42. “All
that historical criticism can establish is the fact that the first
disciples came to believe in the resurrection.”
22. See
also James D.G. Dunn, "'A Light to the Gentiles', or 'The End of the
Law'? The Significance of the Damascus Road Christophany for Paul," in
Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), p. 95.
23.
Dunn, "'A Light to the Gentiles'," pp. 89-107.
24. One
finds a veritable cloud of witnesses to this point in the recent
symposium collection The Road from
Damascus: The Impact of Paul's Conversion on His Life, Thought, and
Ministry
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), ed. Richard N. Longenecker. It would be
closer to the truth, I am suggesting, to speak of "the impact of Paul's
life, thought, and ministry on the story of Paul's Damascus Road
conversion."
25.
Despite the pooh-poohing of A. Vögeli ("Lukas und Euripides,"
Theologische Zeitschrift 9 [1953] who held that Acts' parallels with
the Bacchae are merely fortuitous and depend on dime-a-dozen
literary motifs widespread in the Hellenistic world, it is plain that
Luke has made extensive use of the Bacchae, as Lilian Portefaix
has demonstrated in detail, Sisters Rejoice: Paul's Letter to the
Philippians and Luke-Acts as Seen by First Century Philippian Women,
Coniectanea biblica. New Testament series, 20 [Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell, 1988], p. 170. In fact, Luke has used the Pentheus versus
Dionysus sequence twice, since the story of Paul and the Philippian
jailer in Acts 16 is manifestly based on it, too, and much more
extensively, though this time it is Paul who takes the role of Dionysus'
apostle, while the jailer is the Pentheus analog.
26. The
Septuagint, or LXX, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures,
or Old Testament, widely read by Hellenistic Jews and early Christians
in New Testament times. Recent scholars have demonstrated how Luke seems
to have gotten many of his own stories by adapting LXX prototypes. See
Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1988);
Thomas L. Brodie, "Luke the Literary Interpreter: Luke-Acts as a
Systematic Rewriting and Updating of the Elijah-Elisha Narrative in 1
and 2 Kings." P.D. Dissertation, Pontifica Universita S. Tommaso
d'Aquino, 1981; Ann Arbor: University Microilms, 1992; Brodie,
"Reopening the Quest for Proto-Luke: The Systematic Use of Judges 6-12
in Luke 16:1-18:8," Journal of Higher Criticism. Vol. 2, no. 1,
Spring 1995, 68-101.
27. To
return to the parallel with the legend of the Buddha's Great
Renunciation, we might point out that, just as Luke appropriated 2
Maccabees' story of Heliodorus' blindness and conversion to embellish
Paul's story, so does Buddhist tradition seem to have borrowed the
legend of the Great Renunciation from the story of the Buddha's
predecessor and near-contemporary Mahavira (Vardhamana), the founder or
repristinator of Jainism. Maurice Bloomfield, The Life and Stories of
the Jaina Savior Parcvanatha (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1919),
pp. 114-115.
28. I am
using William Arrowsmith's translation in David Grene and Richard
Lattimore (eds.), Greek Tragedies, Volume 3 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, Phoenix paperbound edition, 1972), pp. 189-260.
29.
Reproduced here, with slight variations, from James Louis Martyn,
History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (NY: Harper & Row, 1968),
p. 11.
30.
Cited in Hugh J. Schonfield, The Essene Odyssey (Longmead,
Shaftesbury, Dorset:: Element Books, 1984), pp. 51-52.
31. J.C.
O’Neill, The Recovery of Paul's Letter to the Galatians (London:
SPCK, 1972), p. 24.
32.
Ibid., pp. 24-26.
33.
Robert M. Price, "Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a
Post-Pauline Interpolation.” In Price and Jeffery J. Lowder, eds.,
The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave (Amherst: Prometheus Books,
2005), pp. 69-104
34.
Richard I. Pervo, Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the
Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) shows both the
novelistic character of Acts and how traditional attempts to denigrate
its "apocryphal" relatives have more to do with orthodox canon polemics
than with historical judgment.
35. For
different estimates of the extent and worth of underlying Clementine
sources see E. Stanley Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on
the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27-71.
Texts and Translations 37, Christian Apocrypha Series 2. (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1995); Robert E. Van Voorst, The Ascents of James:
History and Theology of a Jewish-Christian Community. SBL
Dissertation Series 112. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); Robert
Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus
The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea
Scrolls
(NY: Viking, 1996).
36. L. Gordon Rylands, A
Critical Analysis if the Four chief Pauline Epistles: Romans, First and
Second Corinthians, and Galatians (London:Watts, 1929), p. 353.
37. As
Francis Watson ably shows in Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A
Sociological Approach. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph
Series 56 ([Cambridge, 1986), pp. 26-38, there may well have been a
Pauline "conversion" of sorts, but only from one sort of Christian
mission to another. Paul may have begun preaching a gospel compatible
with circumcision among Jews, found only meager results, and turned to
the wider Gentile world, trimming back the stringent demands of the Law
to make it easier for Gentiles to convert (precisely as his foes
alleged).
38. T.G.
Elliott, The Christianity of Constantine the Great (Scranton:
University of Scranton Press, 1996).
By
Robert M. Price