the limits of variety 191
with competence in Greek rhetoric, and he probably knew the Bible
mainly from its Greek translation. Soon after the crucifixion of Jesus,
when he first came into contact in Judaea with the followers of Jesus, he
‘persecuted the Church of God’, as he told the Corinthians. Why he was
‘trying to destroy’ the Church he did not explain in any of his own
epistles. The book of Acts represents his having taken the initiative to
get authority for this persecution from the High Priest in Jerusalem:
‘Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the
Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the syna-
gogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way,
men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.’ This journey
to Damascus, in 33 ce, was to change everything, for as he was travel-
ling he had a vision of ‘Jesus, our Lord’ on which he was later to base
his claim to be an apostle of Christ.^49
Paul’s vision is narrated with great drama more than once by the
author of Acts, and it became the central pillar of his own understand-
ing of his mission in life:
Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light
from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice
saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are
you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But
get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’ The men
who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the
voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes
were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought
him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate
nor drank.He had been, so he wrote to the Corinthians, ‘caught up to the third
heaven – whether in the body, or out of the body, God knows ... caught
up into Paradise’, where he ‘heard things that are not to be told, that no
mortal is permitted to repeat’. The vision shares much with the apoca-
lypses described in other Jewish texts (on which more in Chapter 8), but
in this case Paul was happy to declare it as his own rather than shelter
behind a pseudonym – and to use it as the basis of his authority.^50
Paul declared himself to have been called by God, through the reve-
lation of his Son, ‘so that I might proclaim him among the gentiles’. His
extensive journeys around the eastern Mediterranean world from c. 33
ce to c. 60 ce were aimed primarily at bringing non- Jews to seek salv-
ation through faith in Christ without first becoming Jews. Members of