Paul's own account of the Damascus road
1 “Brothers and fathers, listen to the defense which I now make to you.” 2 When they heard that he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they were even more quiet. He said, 3 “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict tradition of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, even as you all are today. 4 I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women, 5 as also the high priest and all the council of the elders testify, from whom also I received letters to the brothers, and traveled to Damascus to bring them also who were there to Jerusalem in bonds to be punished. 6 “As I made my journey and came close to Damascus, about noon suddenly a great light shone around me from the sky. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ 8 I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ He said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you persecute.’ 9 “Those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they didn’t understand the voice of him who spoke to me. 10 I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ The Lord said to me, ‘Arise, and go into Damascus. There you will be told about all things which are appointed for you to do.’ 11 When I couldn’t see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of those who were with me, I came into Damascus. 12 “One Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well reported of by all the Jews who lived in Damascus, 13 came to me, and standing by me said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ In that very hour I looked up at him. 14 He said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from his mouth. 15 For you will be a witness for him to all men of what you have seen and heard. 16 Now why do you wait? Arise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.’
Telling the story himself to a hostile crowd, Paul emphasizes everything Jewish about it — his training, his zeal, and the devout man who was sent to him.
The second of the three accounts of the Damascus road is shaped throughout for the men listening, and the shaping is the point of reading it separately.
He begins with his credentials, and every one of them is calculated. I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city — raised in Jerusalem, not the diaspora. At the feet of Gamaliel, the most respected teacher of the age, whose name this book has already introduced. Instructed according to the strict tradition of the law of our fathers. And then a sentence that concedes them everything: being zealous for God, even as you all are today.
He grants that their zeal is real and directs it at himself. He was that; he did that. And the proof he offers is his record against the church — binding and delivering into prisons both men and women — with the high priest and the council named as witnesses who can confirm it.
The vision is then told with details the earlier account omitted. It was about noon, so the light that outshone it was not a trick of dusk. And the voice adds a phrase: I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you persecute. The hometown is supplied for this audience, naming the man in the terms they would have used to dismiss him.
One difference between this telling and the first is old and much discussed. Here his companions saw the light and were afraid, but they didn't understand the voice; there they were said to hear the sound but see no one. The Greek verb for hearing takes different constructions with different senses, and the distinction between perceiving a sound and understanding speech is available in the language. The plainest reading is that they experienced the phenomenon and did not receive the message — which is what the two accounts, read together, actually assert.
What this telling does most carefully is with Ananias. In the first account he is a disciple who is afraid and obeys. Here he is a devout man according to the law, well reported of by all the Jews who lived in Damascus. Not a word about his fear or his objection. For this crowd, what matters is that the man who received Paul into the church was a law-observant Jew with an unimpeachable local reputation.
And his commission is enlarged. The God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from his mouth. The God is theirs, jointly; the title for Christ is one Stephen used before the council; and the qualification stated is having seen and heard — the eyewitness standard the book set in its first chapter, applied to Paul.
The last words quoted are Ananias': Arise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. The washing is placed beside the baptism and beside the calling, and the sequence is not divided into stages. What the sentence describes is one act of turning, with a word for the outward part and a word for the inward, and an urgency in front of both — why do you wait?
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