Apostle of Doom

The man

Saul of Tarsus, from persecutor of the first believers to self-appointed apostle, and the mind behind the change.

  1. Profile

    Who was Paul of Tarsus?

    A Pharisee from Cilicia who hunted the first followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, then claimed to be their apostle. What the sources allow us to know about the man.

  2. The vision

    Saul the persecutor

    Acts records that Saul dragged men and women to prison and consented to the killing of Stephen. The Jewish tradition has a name for that hatred.

    Part 1 of 3

  3. The vision

    The Damascus road: one vision, three stories

    Paul's authority rests on a single experience outside Damascus. The only narrative source tells it three times and cannot keep its details straight.

    Part 2 of 3

  4. The vision

    A self-appointed apostle

    Barnabas vouched for him, and Paul at once named himself an apostle, cursed dissenters, and preached a gospel he admitted was his own.

    Part 3 of 3

  5. The mind

    The persecutor and his guilt

    A persecutor who began to see visions, and never stopped fighting his own past. What identity theory and psychoanalysis suggest.

    Part 1 of 2

  6. The mind

    Ego, epilepsy and narcissism

    Ego inflation, religious psychosis, pathological narcissism and temporal lobe epilepsy: the clinical readings, and why they leave the Islamic verdict unchanged.

    Part 2 of 2