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A:Christians believe that Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus and that as a result of that experience, he converted and became an evangelist.

Acts of the Apostles contains three, slightly different accounts of the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. Acts 26:14 says, "And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. " This saying attributed to Jesus is a quotation from the ancient play called the Bacchae by Euripides (fifth century BCE). It is strange that Jesus should quote a particular Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic ("in the Hebrew tongue"). Jesus used the same "familiar quotation" as Euripides, and in the same situation. In both cases we have a conversation between a persecuted god and his persecutor. In The Bacchaethe persecuted god is Dionysus and his persecutor is Pentheus, king of Thebes. Just like Jesus, Dionysus calls his persecutor to account, "You disregard my words of warning . . . and kick against the goads [pricks], a man defying god." In Acts, Jesus even uses the same plural form of the noun (kentra) that Euripides needs for the metre of his line, although only one prick or goad would ever be used to spur an animal on, giving rise to the notion of the animal kicking back against the prick.

Paul himself never mentions any divine vision that led to his conversion; 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 there was no voice that spoke from heaven, saying "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks"

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