How did God teach Paul?

Answer 1

Acts of the Apostles tells that Paul was blinded by a divine light and heard the voice of Jesus commanding him not to persecute the Christians, went immediately to Damascus, was cured by the disciple Ananius and then taught the gospel.

In his epistles, Paul tells a very different story. After his conversion, he went immediately to Arabia, only later going to Damascus, and conferred with no-one. Galatians 1:15-17:

But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus.

Confirming this account, in Galatians 2:2, Paul says that he visited the church in Jerusalem "and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles." Clearly the gospel he was teaching was different to that taught by the Jerusalem brethren, or he would not have found it necessary to explain it to the people in Jerusalem. In which case, Paul did not receive it from the disciples of the Jerusalem church, in spite of Acts.

If Paul did not receive it from the disciples of the Jerusalem church, he could have already been a Christian of sorts. Some scholars believe this may have been the case, and that those he had been persecuting were from another branch of Christianity, perhaps those who sought to introduce uncircumcised gentiles, or 'heathens', to Christianity, which was still regarded as very much a sect of Judaism. On this theory, his 'conversion' was simply the realisation of his mission to convert the Gentiles.