Saul had been actively persecuting Christians. He was blinded by the light on the road to Damascus, and Jesus identified himself. As Saul was a very religious man, he had no difficulty in praying, so was praying to God and repentant of what he had done.
God sent Ananias to restore Saul's sight, and Saul started to expound the very Jesus he had been trying to stamp out. After some years, he became Paul and embarked upon his first missionary journey.
The brilliant radiance of the Resurrected Christ.Paul/Saul appears to have been blinded by the brilliant light which was the risen and glorified Jesus. It is also possible that Jesus may have miraculously blinded Paul even despite this light. However, the light was so bright that it was stronger than the sun appears - the glory of the light is identified in Acts 22:11 as being the cause.
Acts of the Apostles, written decades after Paul's death, provides three parallel but different miraculous stories in which Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. In each account there was a blinding light, which appeared only to Paul in the version at Acts 9:3-8 and probably at Acts 26.13-19, but appeared to both Paul and his men at Acts 22:6-11 (although only Paul was blinded). Paul alone heard a voice from heaven at Acts 22:6-11 and probably at Acts 26.13-19, but both Paul and his men heard the voice at Acts 9:3-8. Each of these stories says that the voice from heaven said it was Jesus, and from this one could believe that Paul did accept that it was really Jesus.
The three accounts of this event actually appear to have been based on the ancient play of Euripedes called the Bacchae. This alone would be enough to cast serious doubts on the explanation in Acts.
Paul himself provides very little information about how he came to believe that he was called to be the apostle to the gentiles. He never mentions any divine vision that led to his conversion nor of his being temporarily blinded; in fact his epistles seem to have ruled this out. In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul said that after his conversion, he travelled to Arabia, and only then went to Damascus (bypassing Jerusalem), then Jerusalem, Syria and Cilicia, and, after a period of fourteen years, back to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:17-2:1). On this evidence, we could reasonably say that Jesus did not meet Paul on the road to Damascus, at least not at the time of his conversion, and Paul was certainly not required to go immediately to the nearest city (Damascus) because of blindness.
In his epistles, Paul never mentions having been blinded or even of having a vision on the road to Damascus. In fact what he does tell us about his conversion and about his earliest Christian journey is quite at odds with having been blinded at all.
Acts of the Apostles gives us three different accounts of Paul's conversion. Following the first account, in Acts 9:17-18, Ananias placed his hand on Paul's head and told him that he was to receive his sight back. A briefer version of the same miracle is in Acts 22:13. The third account, in Acts chapter 26 omits mention of Paul having been blinded, which does not necessarily contradict the two other accounts in Acts although there are other contradictions.
Paul himself, in his epistles, never mentioned being blinded by God and his own story of his conversion and subsequent travels differ substantially from the later, third-party story in Acts of the Apostles.
Acts of the Apostles contains three somewhat incompatible accounts of the event in which Paul was blinded, that theologists and scholars have struggled to reconcile. In the first two cases, Paul went immediately to Damascus and, since he was blinded by the light, the disciple Ananius miraculously cured him and gave him baptism. In the third case, it is strongly implied that he went first to Damascus, but in this case a sojourn in Arabia need not be ruled out. It has been shown that the story of Paul's conversion has parallels to the ancient Greek play the Bacchae (even having Jesus use exactly the same words as the god Apollo does in the play), and is believed to have been inspired by that play.
Saul, later to become Paul, had his sight taken from him for a time by God after his encounter on the Damascus road in which he saw a bright light from Heaven and heard Christ speaking.
A disciple of Christ living in Damascus healed St. Paul.
you lose sight
He did not lose his sight; his eyesight is poor, and he just likes to wear prescription sunglasses.
He was blinded while on the road to Damascus.
St Paul MINNESOTA? No.
first you will lose your sight
The address of the St. Paul Public Library is: 145 Fifth Street, St. Paul, 72760 0123
Jesus called st. Paul ....err... well...st. Paul I guess
Saul
No, St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota.
St Paul
June 29 is the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.
He did not.