The conversion of Paul the Apostle (also the Pauline conversion, Damascene conversion, Damascus Christophany and Paul's transformation on the road to Damascus) was, according to the New Testament, an event in the life of Saul/Paul the Apostle that led him to cease persecuting early Christians and to become a follower of Jesus.

New Testament accounts Paul's conversion experience is discussed in both the Pauline epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. According to both sources, Saul/Paul was not a follower of Jesus and did not know him before his crucifixion. The narrative of the Book of Acts suggests Paul's conversion occurred four to seven years after the crucifixion of Jesus. The accounts of Paul's conversion experience describe it as miraculous, supernatural, or otherwise revelatory in nature.

Before conversion Paul, who also went by Saul, was "a Pharisee of Pharisees" who "intensely persecuted" the followers of Jesus. Paul describes his life before conversion in his Epistle to the Galatians:

Paul also discusses his pre-conversion life in his Epistle to the Philippians, 3:4–6, and his participation in the stoning of Stephen is described in Acts 7:57–8:3.

Pauline epistles

In the Pauline epistles, the description of Paul's conversion experience is brief. The First Epistle to the Corinthians 9:1 and 15:3–8 suggests that Paul saw the risen Christ:

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians also discusses Paul's experience of revelation. In verse 1 the NIV translation mentions "revelations from the Lord", but other translations, including the NASB, translate that phrase as "revelations of the Lord". The passage begins with Paul seeming to speak about another person, but very quickly he makes it clear he is speaking of himself.

The Epistle to the Galatians chapter 1 also describes Paul's conversion as a divine revelation, with Jesus appearing to him

Acts of the Apostles The Acts of the Apostles discusses Paul's conversion experience at three different points in the text, in far more detail than in the accounts in Paul's letters. The Book of Acts says that Paul was on his way from Jerusalem to Syrian Damascus with a mandate issued by the High Priest to seek out and arrest followers of Jesus, with the intention of returning them to Jerusalem as prisoners for questioning and possible execution. The journey is interrupted when Paul sees a blinding light, and communicates directly with a divine voice.

Acts 9 tells the story as a third-person narrative:

The account continues with a description of Ananias of Damascus receiving a divine revelation instructing him to visit Saul at the house of Judas on the Street Called Straight and there lay hands on him to restore his sight (the house of Judas is traditionally believed to have been near the west end of the street).John Phillips, Exploring Acts: An expository commentary, Kregel Academic, 2001, , p. 179. Ananias is initially reluctant, having heard about Saul's persecution, but obeys the divine command:

Acts' second telling of Paul's conversion occurs in a speech Paul gives when he is arrested in Jerusalem. Paul addresses the crowd and tells them a different description of his conversion. The speech is clearly tailored for its Jewish audience, with stress being placed in Acts 22:12 on Ananias's good reputation among Jews in Damascus, rather than on his Christianity.C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles: Introduction and commentary on Acts XV-XXVIII, Continuum, 2004, , pp. 1029–1031.

Acts' third discussion of Paul's conversion occurs when Paul addresses King Agrippa, defending himself against the accusations of antinomianism that have been made against him. This account is briefer than the others. The speech here is again tailored for its audience, emphasizing what a Roman ruler would understand: the need to obey a heavenly vision, and reassuring Agrippa that Christians were not a secret society.Charles H. Talbert, Reading Acts: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Smyth & Helwys, 2005, , pp 208–209.

Differences between the accounts While states that Paul's travelling companions heard a voice and did not see, states that they did not hear the voice but saw the light. Traditional readings and modern biblical scholarship both see a discrepancy between these passages, which has been the subject of some debate;Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A socio-rhetorical commentary, Eerdmans, 1998, , pp. 312–13. Craig Keener notes that ancient historians would not have trifled over differences in minor details, with the point being selective revelation. Some modern conservative evangelical commentators argue that the discrepancy can be explained. Richard Longenecker argues that first century readers might have understood the two passages to mean that everybody heard the sound of the voice, but "only Paul understood the articulated words".Richard N. Longenecker, The Ministry and Message of Paul, Zondervan, 1971, , p. 32.For example, R. C. H. Lenski, Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles 1–14, Volume 1, 1944 (reprinted 2008 by Augsburg Fortress, ), p. 356; or the Ignatius Catholic study Bible on Acts 9:7.

The debate revolves around two Greek words. The noun φωνή (phōnē - a source of English words such as "telephone", "phonic", and "phoneme") translates as "voice, utterance, report, faculty of speech, the call of an animal", but also as "sound" when referring poetically to an inanimate object; however, the normal Greek word for an inarticulate sound is ψόφος (psophos). The verb ἀκούω (akouō - a source of English words such as "acoustics"), which usually means "hear", has the secondary meaning of "understand", which is how most translations render it in , for example. However, this meaning is so rare that the main English-to-Greek dictionaries do not list ἀκούω among the possible translations of "understand". Resolving the discrepancy involves translating φωνή and ἀκούω in Acts 9:7 as "sound" and "hear" respectively, but translating the same words in Acts 22:9 as "voice" and "understand".

The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue) renders the two texts as follows:

Most traditional translations including the English King James Version (KJV),Compare Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9 the Latin Vulgate,Compare Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9 and Luther's German translationCompare Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9 are similar, translating the key words identically in each of the parallel texts, and thus not disguising the contradiction. However, since the 1970s, some versions have attempted a harmonizing translation, including the New International Version (NIV), which reads:

Likewise the NET Bible and others. By translating φωνή and ἀκούω differently in each case, the contradiction is disguised.

Those who support harmonizing readings sometimes point out that in Acts 9:7, ἀκούω appears in a participle construction with a genitive (ἀκούοντες μὲν τῆς φωνῆς), and in Acts 22:9 as a finite verb with an accusative object (φωνὴν οὐκ ἤκουσαν). Nigel Turner suggests the use of the accusative indicates hearing with understanding.Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights Into the New Testament, Continuum, 2004, , pp. 87–90. More commonly, proponents of this view have asserted that the genitive is used when a person is heard, the accusative for a thing, which goes in the same direction but yields a far weaker argument.J. W. Wenham, The Elements of New Testament Greek, Cambridge, 1991, p. 203.Herbert Weir Smyth and Gordon M. Messing, Greek Grammar, 2nd ed., Harvard University Press, 1956, , p. 323. New Testament scholars Daniel B. Wallace and F.F. Bruce find this argument based on case inconclusive and caution against using it.Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, Zondervan, 1997, , p. 313-314.Frederick Fyvie Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed, Eerdmans, 1990, , p. 236. Wallace gathers all examples of ἀκούω with each construction in the New Testament and finds that there are more exceptions to the supposed rule than examples of it. He concludes: "regardless of how one works through the accounts of Paul's conversion, an appeal to different cases probably ought not to form any part of the solution."

Theological implications

Whereas Protestants saw the conversion as a demonstration of sola fide, Counter-Reformation Catholics saw it as a demonstration of, or at least a metaphor for, the power of preaching, which received a strong new emphasis after the Council of Trent.Leone, Chapter 1

The conversion of Paul, in spite of his attempts to completely eradicate Christianity, is seen as evidence of the power of Divine Grace, with "no fall so deep that grace cannot descend to it"Johann Peter Lange (ed.), A commentary on the Holy Scriptures: critical, doctrinal, and homiletical, Volume 8, Scribner, 1868, p. 24. and "no height so lofty that grace cannot lift the sinner to it." It also demonstrates "God's power to use everything, even the hostile persecutor, to achieve the divine purpose."Jean Marie Hiesberger, The Catholic Bible, Personal Study Edition: New American Bible, Oxford University Press US, 2007, , p. 341.

There is no evidence to suggest that Paul arrived on the road to Damascus already with a single, solid, coherent scheme that could form the framework of his mature theology. Instead, the conversion, and the associated understanding of the significance of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, caused him to rethink from the ground up everything he had ever believed in, from his own identity to his understanding of Second Temple Judaism and who God really was.

The transforming effect of Paul's conversion influenced the clear antithesis he saw "between righteousness based on the law,"G. Walter Hansen, "Paul's Conversion and His Ethic of Freedom in Galatians," in The Road from Damascus: The impact of Paul's conversion on his life, thought, and ministry, Richard N. Longenecker (ed.), Eerdmans, 1997, , pp. 213–37 (quotes on p. 214). which he had sought in his former life; and "righteousness based on the death of Christ," which he describes, for example, in the Epistle to the Galatians.

Based on Paul's testimony in Galatians 1 and the accounts in Acts (Acts 9, 22, 26), where it is specifically mentioned that Paul was tasked to be a witness to the Gentiles, it could be interpreted that what happened on the road to Damascus was not just a conversion from first-century Judaism to a faith centred on Jesus Christ, but also a commissioning of Paul as an Apostle to the Gentiles—although in Paul's mind they both amounted to the same thing.

Alternative explanations

The Acts of the Apostles says that Paul's conversion experience was an encounter with the resurrected Christ. Alternative explanations have been proposed, including sun stroke and seizure. In 1987, D. Landsborough published an article in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, in which he stated that Paul's conversion experience, with the bright light, loss of normal bodily posture, a message of strong religious content, and his subsequent blindness, suggested "an attack of temporal lobe epilepsy, perhaps ending in a convulsion ... The blindness which followed may have been post-ictal."

This conclusion was challenged in the same journal by James R. Brorson and Kathleen Brewer, who stated that this hypothesis failed to explain why Paul's companions heard a voice (Acts 9:7), saw a light, or fell to the ground. Additionally, Paul's blindness remitted in sudden fashion, rather than the gradual resolution typical of post-ictal states, and no mention is made of epileptic convulsions; indeed such convulsions may, in Paul's time, have been interpreted as a sign of demonic influence, unlikely in someone accepted as a religious leader.