Conversion of Paul the Apostle

I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.Paul also discusses his pre-conversion life in his Epistle to the Philippians, 3:4–6,[5] and his participation in the stoning of Stephen is described in Acts 7:57–8:3.

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.The Epistle to the Galatians chapter 1 also describes his conversion as a divine revelation, with Jesus appearing to Paul.

[...] But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being.The Acts of the Apostles discusses Paul's conversion experience at three different points in the text, in far more detail than in the accounts in Paul's letters.

Acts 9 tells the story as a third-person narrative: As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.The account continues with a description of Ananias of Damascus receiving a divine revelation instructing him to visit Saul at the house of Judas on the Street Called Straight and there lay hands on him to restore his sight (the house of Judas is traditionally believed to have been near the west end of the street).

The speech is clearly tailored for its Jewish audience, with stress being placed in Acts 22:12[19] on Ananias's good reputation among Jews in Damascus, rather than on his Christianity.

The speech here is again tailored for its audience, emphasizing what a Roman ruler would understand: the need to obey a heavenly vision,[22] and reassuring Agrippa that Christians were not a secret society.

The noun φωνή (phōnē - a source of English words such as "telephone", "phonic", and "phoneme") translates as "voice, utterance, report, faculty of speech, the call of an animal", but also as "sound" when referring poetically to an inanimate object;[28] however, the normal Greek word for an inarticulate sound is ψόφος (psophos).

[32] The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which is commonly the preferred translation of biblical scholars and used in the most influential publications in the field,[33] renders the two texts as follows: The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.

[37] More commonly, proponents of this view have asserted that the genitive is used when a person is heard, the accusative for a thing, which goes in the same direction but yields a far weaker argument.

He concludes: "regardless of how one works through the accounts of Paul’s conversion, an appeal to different cases probably ought not to form any part of the solution.

"[43] There is no evidence to suggest that Paul arrived on the road to Damascus already with a single, solid, coherent scheme that could form the framework of his mature theology.

In 1987, D. Landsborough published an article in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry,[47] in which he stated that Paul's conversion experience, with the bright light, loss of normal bodily posture, a message of strong religious content, and his subsequent blindness, suggested "an attack of temporal lobe epilepsy, perhaps ending in a convulsion ...

"[47] This conclusion was challenged in the same journal by James R. Brorson and Kathleen Brewer,[48] who stated that this hypothesis failed to explain why Paul's companions heard a voice (Acts 9:7), saw a light,[49] or fell to the ground.

[48] A 2012 paper in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences suggested that Paul’s conversion experience might be understood as involving psychogenic events.

This occurring in the overall context of Paul’s other auditory and visual experiences that the authors propose may have been caused by mood disorder associated psychotic spectrum symptoms.

In the very midst of his sinful career grace called to Saul to stop, and changed his heart so completely that the bitter enemy of Jesus Christ was transformed into an apostle, all aglow with love; and the persecutor of the Christian faith became its indefatigable defender and advocate.

"[52] Thomas Aquinas sees Paul's conversion as an example of a sudden grace of God, writing in his Summa Theologiae: Since a man cannot prepare himself for grace unless God prevent and move him to good, it is of no account whether anyone arrive at perfect preparation instantaneously, or step by step.

[54] Metanoia (theology) is also a closely studied word linked to the ascetical journey of conversion - well illustrated by St Paul's Damascus moment.

The subject was not common in medieval art, only usually being painted as one of a number of predella scenes of his life below an altarpiece dedicated to the saint.

[55] The conversion of Paul has been depicted by many artists, including Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Camilo, Giovanni Bellini, Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, William Blake, Luca Giordano, Sante Peranda, and Juan Antonio de Frías y Escalante.

[61] In "-30-", the finale episode of The Wire, Norman Wilson tells Mayor Tommy Carcetti the Jimmy McNulty/Lester Freamon “serial killer” hoax is the mayor's "road to Damascus" moment and likens the detectives' fabrication of a serial killer, which allows them to successfully fund and achieve their actual investigative goals, to Carcetti’s adoption of popular campaign platforms he doesn't really care about in order to achieve his actual political agenda.

Parallels can also be drawn to the compromises and decisions made by other entities who have taken shortcuts or otherwise “juked” the data to achieve their ends, such as The Baltimore Sun's managing editors in their pursuit of a Pulitzer Prize.

The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle commemorates this event, and is celebrated in the liturgical year on 25 January.

This feast is celebrated in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches, and concludes the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an yearly international Christian ecumenical event that began in 1908, which is an octave or eight-day observance beginning 18 January (observed in Anglican and Lutheran tradition as the Confession of Peter, and in the pre-Vatican II Catholic calendar as the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter at Rome).

Supposed prophecies ranged from fine days predicting good harvests, to clouds and mists signifying pestilence and war in the coming months.