…extract from overall text only:…"…We are given two different accounts of the aftermath of St Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. In the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that he began to preach after only a few days with the disciples in Damascus (Acts 9: 20). It then suggests that he went quite quickly to Jerusalem where “he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him: they could not believe he was really a disciple” (Acts 9: 26). Having spent only a short time with them, and because of arguments with the Hellenists, he went to Caesarea and then to Tarsus (Acts 9: 30).
We belittle his struggle with conversion if we assume that it all happened in that blinding flash which threw him to the ground! St Paul has to make his own journey, as do we all. The extent of the journey that he had to make seems all the more momentous when we read the description that he himself gives, in the Acts of the Apostles, of his early life:…"…go to link at top of Post for entire article…
