Paul often presents himself as an apostle on the strength of personal experience and the direct revelation he claims to have received. He states that the gospel he brought came from no man but was received through the revelation of Jesus Christ.8 The statement raises a serious question.
If the revelation was real, why do the disciples who received the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him) directly never refer to Paul? Disciples such as Peter and Barnabas often disputed Paul’s approach as contrary to the law. The tension between Paul and Peter over obedience to the Torah reflects a basic difference in their apostolic method.
Jesus often warned that no one should set himself up as absolute spiritual leader, and insisted that all his followers are equal as brethren.9 Paul declared himself a preacher, an apostle and a teacher, a statement that reflects his effort to build personal authority.10
When we examine the content of Paul’s letters, we find claims of apparitions, mystical encounters and unseen experiences that form the basis of his “apostleship”. These narratives are full of contradiction and vagueness, and they lack any witness from a reliable external source. Some appear only in Paul’s own letters, without confirmation in the gospels or in Acts.
The five hundred witnesses
Among the most suspect is his note in 1 Corinthians that the risen Jesus supposedly appeared to “more than five hundred at once”:
6After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.1
Prima facie, a claim of five hundred witnesses shifts the burden to the doubter; on inspection it names none. The statement finds no support in any canonical gospel. Mark, Matthew, Luke and John are silent about this mass appearance. So is Acts, which should have recorded so important an event if it happened; instead it plainly mentions only about 120 disciples gathered after the crucifixion.11
More doubtful still, Paul names none of the “500 witnesses.” By adding that “some are fallen asleep,” he seems to head off any further inquiry into the testimony.
Stranger yet, none of the other early followers of al-Masīḥ, Peter, James or any other disciple, ever refers to the event, in any recorded writing or speech. The absence of any repetition or support for the claim in any early Christian source suggests that Paul may have invented the story to strengthen the argument for the resurrection at the center of his new teaching.
The claim of an appearance to 500 is the plainest example of how the post-crucifixion narrative in Paul’s writings rests on rhetorical invention in support of his theological agenda.12 It reflects Paul’s tendency to add mystical and dramatic elements with no empirical basis, the modus operandi of the “personal revelations” he so often claimed.
Satan as an angel of light
Beyond the claim of a crowd of unnamed witnesses, Paul also presents a personal unseen experience as the chief basis of his “apostleship”. As discussed earlier, Paul, then known as Saul, set out for Damascus to hunt more followers of Jesus Christ.
On the way he claimed to have “met” ʿĪsā ibn Maryam through an experience from the sky in the form of a “bright shining light.” After it he is said to have declared his repentance and professed himself a chosen follower of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam.13
As explained earlier, the story exists in three different versions. All three share one element: the claim that he met ʿĪsā ibn Maryam in a mysterious event involving “a bright light from heaven.”
3And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: 4And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?2
6And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me.3
12Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, 13At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. 14And 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.4
Paul claims that a “bright light” from heaven surrounded him at his mysterious “meeting” with the figure said to be ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. Even if the event happened, it does not follow that Paul met ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. The New Testament itself states that the Devil can disguise himself as an angel of light:
14And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.5
Is the resemblance between the appearance of the Devil, as Paul himself wrote it in the New Testament, and the event he experienced in Acts not plain?
“Lord” before the Spirit
There is, further, a suspicious contradiction between Paul’s own statement and what is reported in the story of his repentance on the Damascus road. He writes that no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.14
Yet in the dramatic story of his repentance, before he had received the Holy Spirit, Paul already addresses the mysterious entity that appeared to him as “Lord” (κύριε, kýrie). That is a serious awkwardness in the consistency of his own claim.
3Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.6
The story adds that a man named Ananias came only three days later to tell Paul that he would be “filled with the Holy Ghost.”15 So before that he did not have the Spirit. If his own words are true, how could someone who had not received the Holy Spirit say “Jesus is Lord”?
Stranger still, the words Paul spoke at the time were “Who art thou, Lord?”, which shows plainly that he himself did not know who the shining being was. The address “Lord” was therefore an empty expression addressed to an unidentified unseen entity.
Christ as an angel
Beyond the unseen manifestation at Damascus, Paul’s view of the identity of Christ produces significant confusion. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that they received him “as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.” He is recalling how the Galatians welcomed him when he was ill:
ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ἄγγελον θεοῦ ἐδέξασθέ με, ὡς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν
allʼ hōs angelon theou edexasthe me, hōs Christon Iēsoun16
14And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.7
A reader used only to modern translations may take the verse as two separate comparisons: first that Paul was received as an angel of God, second as Christ Jesus. In the Greek text the structure hōs … hōs … refers syntactically to a single referent.
In other letters of Paul the same structure describes one subject under two aspects, never two different entities.17 The more reasonable interpretation is that Paul equated Christ with the angel of God himself, a heavenly being made manifest, and no ordinary man.
In 1 Corinthians, for instance, Paul writes that he could not speak to them as to spiritual people but as to carnal, “even as unto babes in Christ.”18 “Carnal” and “babes in Christ” refer to one group under two descriptions, not two groups. In 2 Corinthians he says they speak “as of God, in the sight of God … in Christ,”19 again two expressions for one reality.
By the same method, the statement that Paul was received “as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus” can be understood as an identification: Christ himself is the angel of God.20 The passage suggests that Paul saw Christ as a heavenly being sent to bring salvation, neither a mere man nor absolute God.21
That understanding shapes how Paul presents Christ: a heavenly creature, an archangel commissioned to save the world. If Paul did equate Christ with an angel, a large question follows: was the being he “met” at Damascus truly ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, or a heavenly entity later given the name “Christ”?
In first-century Jewish thought, belief in heavenly beings as messengers was nothing foreign. It is no surprise that Paul, with his Hellenistic education, matched Christ with ideas such as the Logos, a pre-existent being mediating between God and humanity.22
That view later developed into the teaching of Arius, who rejected the absolute divinity of Christ. Arius taught that Christ was a created being raised in rank by God, who obtained his special standing through perfection and obedience, and not through any eternal divine nature.23
The tendency to interpret Christ as a pre-existent entity is what opened the way to interpretations based on Greek philosophy. The Logos concept associated with Jesus in Johannine theology, and indirectly in Paul’s teaching, was raised into a form of absolute divinity.
That departs from its philosophical origin in the Greek tradition, where the Logos was only the ordering principle of nature, an impersonal rationality acting as the law of cosmic order, never a self-subsisting being, still less an incarnate God. The adaptation shows how far outside philosophy shaped Paul’s doctrine and drew it away from tawḥīd (توحيد, “the oneness of God”).
Modern discussion of this statement of Paul shows that the interpretation is still studied seriously. Many ask whether Paul raised Christ to the rank of a kind of “archangel,”24 in line with Jewish belief in mediating beings such as the Angel of YHWH,25 the Logos, or post-biblical entities such as Metatron.26
The difference between “exaltation” and “incarnation” matters too. Paul leans toward the view that Christ was a heavenly being sent down, and away from a man raised to divine rank.27
That interpretation reflects Paul’s theological leaning toward Christ as a heavenly being, and it raises a more basic question: where did such a view come from? If Paul did not inherit it directly from ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, it is very likely that his frame of thought was shaped by other sources influential among Hellenistic Jews of his time. Here we find the traces of the Talmud, rich in theological speculation and religious legend.
- 1 Corinthians 15:6 (KJV). ↩
- Acts 9:3–4 (KJV). ↩
- Acts 22:6 (KJV). ↩
- Acts 26:12–14 (KJV). ↩
- 2 Corinthians 11:14 (KJV). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 12:3 (KJV). ↩
- Galatians 4:14 (KJV). ↩
- See Galatians 1:11–12. ↩
- Matthew 23:8–10. ↩
- 1 Timothy 2:7. ↩
- Acts 1:15: “And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty).” ↩
- In any tradition that guards historical accuracy, the bearer of a report must be known, and his background examined: who his parents were, what his occupation was, where he was at the time of the event, and how close he stood to the original source. Without such information a claim is no more than a tale without support. ↩
- Colossians 1:1. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 12:3. ↩
- Acts 9:17. ↩
- Galatians 4:14. Greek text and transliteration from Nestle-Aland, 28th edition. ↩
- Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 274–278. ↩
- See 1 Corinthians 3:1. ↩
- See 2 Corinthians 2:17. ↩
- Susan R. Garrett, No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 11–14. ↩
- Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), pp. 257ff. ↩
- ibid., pp. 258–259. ↩
- Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ’s Divinity in the Last Days of Rome (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), pp. 55–58. ↩
- Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, p. 257; see also Garrett, No Ordinary Angel, pp. 11–14. ↩
- A term in the Tanakh for a divine messenger who speaks and acts in God’s name, sometimes described as if identical with YHWH himself. ↩
- A post-biblical figure in Jewish mystical tradition regarded as the chief of the angels; possibly the ʿUzayr mentioned in the Qurʾān, Sūrah al-Tawbah 9:30. ↩
- Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is Michael the archangel, sent as savior; the view aligns with the concept of pre-existence but rejects the absolute divinity of Jesus. ↩