Acts of the Apostles and Paul's epistles appear to be in disagreement as to when Paul began his mission to the gentiles.

Paul's epistles - middle or late twenties

Soon after his conversion to Christianity, Paul says (Galatians 1:17) that after his conversion he went first to Arabia then to Damascus, where he spent 3 years. He does not explain the reason for his trip to Arabia, but one possibility is that he went there to seek permission from Aretas to preach to the gentiles in Damascus, which seems to have been under Nabatean control.

In 2 Corinthians 11:32-33, Paul escaped from Damascus when the governor under Aretas, king of the Nabateans from 9 BCE to 40 CE, had a garrison deployed to arrest him because of his Christian activities. Allowing for his time in Arabia, Paul's conversion was no later than the year 36, and probably somewhat earlier unless we assume a somewhat improbable coincidence.

An earlier date, consistent with the above analysis comes from other passages in Paul's epistles. In Galatians 2:10, "Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do," Paul seems to be passing on and supporting a request by the Jerusalem brethren to send relief to the Judeans. 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 refers to the support of the Galatians for a collection to assist the poor of Judea, and asks very directly that the Corinthians contribute as well. The Corinthians may have needed some prompting, since the request was repeated at some length in 2 Corinthians. Finally, he mentioned the collection in Romans. There is no suggestion that the collection was an ongoing tithe, in fact there is a sense of some urgency and a recognition that the congregations would face difficulty in meeting what was demanded of them. So, Paul invested considerable effort and goodwill in solving a specific problem for the Jerusalem brethren. The one historical event that would explain this was the famine that occurred between 44 and 48 CE. If so, this means that Galatians, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthianswere written during the period 44 to 48, with Romans during the same 4 year period, or soon afterwards.

In Galatians, Paul says he had spent 3 years in Damascus, 14 years in Syria and Cilicia, and we must allow indeterminate periods in the other centres. On a straight-forward reading of the epistle, his conversion would have been at least 18 to 20 years before he wrote Galations. Alternatively, we can interpret Galatians 2:1 as meaning that Paul went to Jerusalem 14 years after his conversion, not the more natural meaning of 14 years after he went to Syria and Cilicia, thus allowing that he wrote Galatians not less than 14-15 years after his conversion. On the basis of Paul's own account, his conversion and the beginning of his mission to the gentiles took place in the mid- to late twenties of the first century.

Acts of the Apostles - early to mid-forties

Acts describes Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus and that he then preached unsuccessfully to the Jews in Damascus, shortly before Agabus prophesied the famine. In this account, his mission to the gentiles began after the apostle Peter received a sign that the gentiles should be brought into the church. There are problems with the Acts account, which alters the Damascus escape story to eliminate any mention of King Aretas and Paul's early preaching to the gentiles. In Acts, the story of Paul's conversion is historically doubtful, as it seems to have been based on the ancient Greek play, the Bacchae. Historians consider Acts, written in the 90s, an anonymous work that freely mixes history with legend, as a book of religious advocacy, not necessarily history (The Jesus Sayings, by Rex Weyler). In spite of these difficulties, Acts does allow us to date the beginning of Paul's mission as late as the mid-forties, consistent with traditional dating of Christ's crucifixion.

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