Borrowing from the old proverb, “all roads lead to Rome,” questioning the Luke-Acts version of Paul’s biography is like a case of do ‘all roads lead to (and from) Jerusalem?’ Was Paul raised and educated in Jerusalem or in Damascus? Did he ever persecute Christians in Jerusalem, or did that happen in Damascus? Did Paul visit Jerusalem shortly after his ‘call’, or was it, according to Galatians 1:17-18, three years after his time in Arabia and subsequent return to Damascus? And exactly how many times did Paul in fact spend time in Jerusalem?
Given these questions, Luke, the claimed author of acts, has a biographical challenge on his hands when his accounts of Paul are compared to Paul’s epistles. Luke, who was one of Paul’s many companions (Meeks and Fitzgerald 171) during Paul’s illustrious adventures throughout much of the Mediterranean, appears to have intimate knowledge of Paul’s roots — although Paul ironically disputes some of this info in his letters.
One example involves Paul’s upbringing and education: Acts 22:4 claims that Paul was native to Jerusalem and cut his Jewish theological teeth under Gamaliel’s tutelage. Yet, based on Paul’s letters, there is no indication that Jerusalem was his first home. Rather, Paul highlights Damascus as a home base where he travels to and from in his early years as an evangelist (Soards 12).
Furthermore, had Paul been a Jerusalem-based student of Gamaliel, who is depicted as being rather tolerant towards Christians (Acts 5:34-39), it would not fit well with Paul originally being a harsh persecutor of Christians (Sanders 9). In addition, Paul himself indicates he was not in Jerusalem during his Pharisee / non-apostolic years (Gal. 1:17, 22). Nevertheless, both Paul’s epistles and Acts agree that Paul did persecute Christians prior to his experience on the way to, or in, Damascus (Sanders 9, 10).
Another example of the Paul-Jerusalem conundrum is whether he visited Jerusalem two times, or possibly three times — or that two of the times were the same time. Not to mention that their individual placements in Acts adds to the confusion. For instance, Acts has Paul in Jerusalem after the Damascus experience (9:23-30), while Paul has a remarkably different account in Galatians. And this may be good time to delve deeper into why the first part of Acts 23 reads, “After a long time passed…” In other words, after the “some days” that Paul stayed with the disciples in Damascus (9:20), a “long time passed” — meaning, and the risk of this being a fringe idea, is it possible that this verse could somehow, someway, corroborate with Paul first spending time in Arabia, then returning to Damascus three years later, and then essentially fleeing to Jerusalem because the Jews in Damascus were out to kill him? Just throwing that there for kicks.
In the meantime, and going back to how many times Acts features Paul in Jerusalem, was it two or three? While Galatians reveals that Paul visited Jerusalem one time, between his encounter with Jesus and the council at Jerusalem, Acts 9:25-30 and 11:27-30 report two visits. Schwartz suggests that, when also factoring Acts 15, both 11:27-30 and 15 are two different accounts of the same visit. Schwartz supports this claim by pointing out that both of these accounts feature Paul and Barnabas leaving for Jerusalem (190).
Now, whether the above examples, as well as several other examples in Acts, are truly problematic, this appears to be a yes-no answer. For the modern-day reader, or when looking through an historical-critical lens, Luke is not necessarily an ace biographer or polished historian. Therefore, yes, Acts could outwardly be viewed as a problem. However, on the flip side — and because Jerusalem appears to be central to Acts — it could very well be that Luke purposely organized Acts around key events that show a linear connection “from God, through Jesus Christ, through the Apostle and the church in Jerusalem, to Paul and the churches he founded outside Palestine” (Soards 12).
Furthermore, when considering Schwartz’ explanation of Acts as a ‘schematic’, perhaps Luke’s purpose is two-fold: to show how the Apostles progressed from Pentecost to evangelizing Jews and, largely because of Paul, also evangelizing the Gentiles; and to draw a dichotomy between Acts and the Gospels. That is, just as Luke rearranges the timeline of Jesus’ mission to start in Nazareth and then eventually end up in Jerusalem, Luke also arranges Acts to begin in Jerusalem and then expand out to the rest of the world (189). That said, the apparent discrepancies between Luke’s biographical accounts of Paul and Paul’s epistles may be more about how the Gospel was carried out and not so much about the timeline.
Works Cited
Meeks, Wayne A. and Fitzgerald, John T. The Writings of St. Paul, 2d Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.
Sanders, E. P. Paul: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Soards, Marion L. The Apostle Paul: An Introduction to his Writings and Teaching. Paulist Press, 1986.