The Damascus Road Experience: Understanding Galatians 1:11-12

Galatians 1:11-12 NIV
[11] I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. [12] I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

That is a staggering claim. Paul here says the gospel he preached had no human origin because no human taught it to him. In other words, Paul claims not to have attended a Sunday School meeting or responded to an altar call. If he had done any of these things, he would have been exposed to the human teachings of the gospel.

However, Paul seems to affirm the opposite position in 1 Corinthians: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:3 ESV). Here, Paul says he received the central Christian message concerning the death of Jesus apparently from those who were Apostles before him. (It also could be that Paul here says he received it from Jesus himself.) Do we have a contradiction in Paul’s messaging, or might there be more beneath the surface? That is the question this piece is devoted to. I shall argue that Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus is the key that unravels these verses and that there is no contradiction. Being a late apostle, Paul had to rely on the earlier Apostles for the historical bits he missed out on, such as the sermons, sayings, and deeds of Jesus while he walked among disciples. However, Paul’s claim of not being taught the Gospel can co-exist with his (later) reliance on the Apostles.

The Damascus Road Experience: A Conversion?

Paul was a Pharisee and a devout Jew. He saw the Jesus phenomenon as one of many such things that misrepresented the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Before Jesus, there were a few occasions when some Jews declared themselves as the promised Messiahs (John 10:8). It was both politically and spiritually dangerous. When people started believing these Messiahs, it could lead to civil unrest that might invite the Romans to do what they did best: brutally squash unrest to preserve the Pax Romana. It was also spiritually dangerous for the Jews to put their hope in false messiahs. It was probably for reasons having to do with avoiding these unpleasant scenarios that Paul obtained permission from the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem to arrest fellow Jews in Damascus, proclaiming the crucified Jesus as the promised Jewish Messiah.

On that journey to Damascus, the resurrected Jesus appeared to Paul and asked why Paul was persecuting him. It was not long before Paul submissively asked:

Acts 22:10 ESV
‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Rise, and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do.’

This account is often described as a conversion experience, and chapter headings continue to reinforce the idea. It is not wholly wrong, especially if what is meant is that Paul believed in Jesus. But “conversion” now carries other meanings that do not apply here. Indeed, to appreciate the argument of this entry, we need to address some of these common deficient ideas.

Before embarking on the journey to Damascus, Paul believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. After the trip, he still believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Furthermore, Paul didn’t have a name change – like Abram becoming Abraham or Jacob becoming Israel. “Saul” and “Paul” were his real names; he had dual citizenship. Saul was the Jewish name, while Paul was the Romanized version of his name. Also, Paul believed in the Hebrew Bible before and still believed in the Old Testament after the trip. He did not get a new Bible—there was no other Bible. Indeed, everything Paul wrote now canonized in the New Testament was informed by his reading of the Hebrew Bible, the Jesus Event, and the encounter on the road to Damascus. Besides, and this may be more jarring, Paul was a Jew before embarking on the journey and remained a Jew afterward. That raises a question – and I have been asked: is there any difference between being a Jew and a Christian?

Christian or a Jew?

First, notice that “Christian” was an exonym given at Antioch (Acts 11:26). The New Testament does not tell us what the first believers in Jesus called themselves before being renamed at Antioch. Likely, they did not have a new name they went by because none was necessary since ALL of the early believers in Jesus were Jews (or proselytes) for a long time. “The Way” (Acts 9:2) also seems to be an exonym used by an enemy for the believers.

Second, Paul did not stop seeing himself as Jewish. Why would he? There is nothing un-Jewish about believing in the promised Jewish Messiah! Indeed, let me buttress my case by pointing out a few things in Acts 22, where Paul told his “conversion” story:

Acts 22:3 ESV
[3] “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day.

Here, Paul emphatically self-identified as a Jew years after the Damascus experience. Notice that “Jew” here is not merely ethnic. The education he refers to here is Pharisaic Judaism. His teacher was the grandson of the famous Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who some see as the most excellent Rabbi ever.

Paul tells his Jewish audience about his encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus and that he became blind afterwards. Jesus then sends a believer, Ananias, to go pray for Paul. Here is how Paul tells the story:

Acts 22:12-15 ESV
[12] “And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, [13] came to me, and standing by me said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him. [14] And he said, ‘The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth; [15] for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard.

Notice that Paul does not think Ananias, a Christian, stopped being Jewish. Ananias was “a devout man according to the Torah.” I submit to you that nobody who was not practicing Judaism could be so described. Furthermore, Ananias “was well spoken of by all the Jews.” So, Ananias did not break fellowship with his people. He did not think they were a source of defilement he must avoid.

Finally and most importantly, Ananias announced to Paul that “the God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth.” The same God Paul was committed to before going to Damascus – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – was the one who appointed Paul to know his will, which involved seeing the resurrected Jesus! If Paul had been committed to that God before, however imperfectly, he could not have swapped religions and still be committed to the same God; when you swap religions, you swap gods! The demonstrable truth is that what we now call Christianity would naturally have been seen as a sect of Judaism in the first century, and there were a few other sects. The believers in Jesus did not stop going to the temple or avoid Jewish holidays.

As he would later say in Romans, Paul understood after the encounter on the road to Damascus that Judaism was supposed to lead to Jesus. Jesus is the end, the goal, of the Torah (Romans 10:4). Such a realization could have only added life, not death, to his religion. The result is what we now call Christianity. Christianity is not an entirely new thing. It is the fulfillment and continuation of an ancient thing. A Jew who believed in Jesus did not stop being a Jew. Instead, she becomes what has been quite appropriately called a Messianic Jew. So, whatever happened to Paul on the road to Damascus cannot be a conversion. A better way to describe what happened might be by Paul’s own phrase in one of his letters: his eyes of understanding were enlightened (Ephesians 1:18).

Back to Galatians 1

Now, we are better prepared to understand the Galatians passage we began with. Here it is again:

Galatians 1:11-12 ESV
[11] For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. [12] For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

The NIV translates what the ESV renders as “not man’s gospel” as “not of human origin.” The point, therefore, is not a contrast between some heavenly gospel and an earthly gospel. On the contrary, Paul’s point is that the gospel he preached – the same as the one preached by Peter, James, John, and others – was not taught to him by an evangelist or an apostle. Paul claims that he got the gospel by revelation. What might that mean?

Notice how the NIV and the ESV render the last portion of verse 12. The NIV states: “I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” This reading suggests that Jesus supernaturally dictated the gospel to Paul. However, there are three reasons for questioning this reading. First, such an act would be a waste of supernatural energy. Paul could have received the same gospel by visiting the other Jews who were apostles before him in Jerusalem – indeed, Paul would later do precisely that when he visited Jerusalem because of a controversy (see Galatians 1:18 – 19, Acts 15, and 21). Second, Paul later writes to the Galatians:

Galatians 2:2 ESV
I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.

Here, Paul says he went to Jerusalem to ensure he was preaching the correct gospel. It is noteworthy that he did not go to Jerusalem to verify his apostleship – and Acts makes it clear that Paul is an apostle through Jesus’s words to Ananias.  Instead, he went to verify his gospel. Why would Paul do this if Jesus had dictated the gospel to him? It is not like human opinions will cancel out a divine revelation. So, we see here that Paul did not question what Acts imply that Jesus told Paul – his apostleship to the Gentiles.

Third, when God supernaturally intervened in Cornelius’ case in Acts 10 by sending an angel, the angel did not deliver the gospel to him. Instead, the angel told him to send for Peter, who was a day’s journey away. So, the pattern seems to indicate that God had fully entrusted the gospel’s message to human believers.

The ESV rendition is more likely: “I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” The word “revelation” here refers to an unveiling or uncovering. So, this rendition of the verse suggests that Paul received the gospel of Jesus through an uncovering (or appearance) of Jesus. If this reading is correct, the natural question is, when did Jesus unveil or appear to Paul? The correct answer, of course, is on the road to Damascus. Actually, Paul gives us many clues in the Galatians 1 passage. Here is a fuller quote:

Galatians 1:11-17 ESV
[11] For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. [12] For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. [13] For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. [14] And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. [15] But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, [16] was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; [17] nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.

Paul tells his audience of his extreme zeal to preserve the traditions of his fathers, which is evident in his persecution of the church of God. But then he switches to when God called him by his grace by revealing his Son to Paul so that Paul might preach God among the Gentiles. All of these items can be explained by the Damascus road experience.

First, when Paul saw the resurrected Jesus and asked who he was, Jesus replied: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5 ESV). Of course, this experience also constituted God’s calling of Paul as the Son of God was revealed to him. Finally, in the version that Luke narrates in Acts 9, Jesus reaches out to Ananias to go lay hands on Paul, who had been blinded by the light surrounding Jesus. Ananias understandably protests to Jesus that Paul is an enemy of the church and has come to terrorize the flock. Luke writes (9:15): “But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel….'” Paul was called to carry Jesus’ name, an allusion to the divinity of Jesus, to the Gentiles – just as Paul tells the Galatians. (See our entry on the name theology here.) We should also note that Paul explicitly mentions Damascus in verse 17.

So, the argument that Paul’s claim that he did not learn the gospel from a human but got it by revelation is explainable by the Damascus road experience is quite good. But there yet remains a little detail requiring an explanation. If, as we have argued, Jesus did not dictate the gospel to Paul on that day, and the text does not say otherwise, how could the mere seeing of the resurrected Jesus have resulted in the extraordinary understanding and writings that Paul gave the church? After all, Peter, James, John, and others saw Jesus daily for three years (including post-resurrection sights), but they did not write as many as Paul. How do we explain that?

This is why I spent some time earlier dissuading readers from seeing Paul’s encounter with Jesus as a conversion. As a devout Pharisee, Paul was familiar with the contents of his Bible, the Old Testament, which contains pointers to the Messiah. He was aware of God’s redemptive program that led to the calling of Abraham and how a seed of Abraham, the Messiah, would finally usher in the reign of God as originally intended.  All these things Paul knew and believed. But there was a missing piece: Paul did not believe that the promised seed of Abraham had come. And if that were true, then the Christian movement would be heretical indeed. That was why he wanted to destroy the movement. However, when Jesus appeared to Paul and identified with the Christians who Paul was persecuting, his eyes of understanding were enlightened. His entire theology changed once Paul realized and believed Jesus was the Messiah. He finally got the missing piece of the puzzle, and his years of study yielded instant fruit. After Ananias laid hands on Paul and he regained his sight, received the Holy Spirit, and was baptized in water, Luke writes:

Acts 9:19-22 ESV
[19] and taking food, he was strengthened. For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. [20] And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” [21] And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” [22] But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

Paul immediately began to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God after only “some days,” confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus. I think this happened only because of Paul’s prior training under Gamaliel as a Pharisee. It takes years for a believer in Jesus to get to the point of “proving that Jesus was the Christ” from the Scriptures. Paul was able to do it immediately because he already had the training. The crucial piece missing in his theology was supplied when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. This is very much like what Jesus did to the theology of Nicodemus, another Pharisee who encountered Jesus, as we detailed elsewhere.

What exactly was the gospel anyway?

Many of us have a limited understanding of the Gospel of Christ due to the church’s historical divergence from its Hebrew roots. This has led to downplaying the significance of certain passages that clearly alert readers to the existence of more beyond the surface. Consider the following:

1 Corinthians 15:3-5 ESV
[3] For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, [4] that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, [5] and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

The passage affirms that Christ died, was buried, and resurrected for humanity’s sins – the heart of the stories told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For many Christians today, this is the entirety of the gospel that must be believed for salvation. It is a manifestly truncated understanding for two reasons. First, as an increasing number of unbelievers continue to help us realize, it is not particularly obvious that the death of a man, especially one that we claim was innocent, equals GOOD news. Yes, the fact of the resurrection eases the discomfort a bit, but it does not eliminate it completely. Second and more importantly, the 1 Corinthians passage repeatedly says, “in accordance with the Scriptures.” Obviously, the “Scriptures” in question refer to the Hebrew Bible, not the New Testament. As a matter of fact, scholars believe that 1 Corinthians 15 is the earliest piece of Christian writing – before Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. So, for sure, the “Scriptures” in question refer to the Old Testament. This should be straightforward, but I want to ensure all doubts are vaporized.

On the road to Emmaus, after Jesus was crucified and buried, two disciples were heartbroken and sad as they traveled. Suddenly, Jesus appeared and walked with them, but they did not recognize him. The guys were troubled because it seemed that Yahweh had failed them. After all, they had hoped that Jesus would deliver them politically and militarily from Rome’s tyranny (compare Acts 1:6). Luke says the following about Jesus’s response to them:

Luke 24:25-27 ESV
[25] And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! [26] Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” [27] And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

So, even the resurrected Jesus relied on “Moses and all the Prophets” as he “interpreted to them in all Scriptures the things concerning himself.” In other words, these passages in 1 Corinthians and Luke tell us that the Gospel of Jesus was contained in the Scriptures before any book of the New Testament was ever written. The Torah and the Prophets already contain the gospel. This is why Paul could repeatedly say, “according to the Scriptures.” Things had to happen according to the Scriptures for the first-century Jews to ascertain that Jesus was the promised Messiah!

So, if the gospel of Jesus was already in the Hebrew Bible, where might we find it? Paul explicitly tells the Galatians:

Galatians 3:8 ESV
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”

Paul boldly says that “the” gospel was preached beforehand to Abraham, and this gospel says that all the nations of the world would be blessed through Abraham. Part of the promised “blessing” is the salvation that Jesus offers. That is the good news – God is reconciling the world to himself through Jesus, just as he always wanted it to be. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is not the gospel per se. These events unlocked the genuine good news as they communicated that the Lord of the universe had finally cleared the road for humans to return home.

Paul could immediately teach these things after his encounter with Jesus because the revelation of Jesus on the road to Damascus breathed life into the body of scriptural knowledge Paul already had through his training as a Pharisee. He did not need a Messianic Jew (or Christian) to show him how Jesus the Messiah makes sense of the Hebrew Bible. However, Paul relied on the other Apostles for historical bits, especially the teachings and deeds of Jesus, which he missed out on. These are the things he received as he wrote to the Corinthians.