Why Did Paul Convert? Did He Convert?
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Chris Huntley
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paul's apparently overnight change from ruthlessly persecuting Christianity to rigorously promoting it is almost certainly the most significant conversion in history: more significant than Augustine's, and even Constantine's. Without Paul's conversion, Christianity as we know it may well have never even happened. But what actually happened?
The New Testament describes Paul's experience on several occasions: but can the accounts be trusted? Are they even consistent with each other? If we want to understand such a world-shattering experience, do we need to invoke the supernatural? Are there other plausible explanations? And is it right to call the event a "conversion" in the sense that Paul turned from one religion (Judaism) to another (Christianity)? These are all key issues for understanding a pivotal point in early Christian history, one that eventually would have enormous ramifications for the history of the west.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. |
| 0:07.3 | The only show, where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar, |
| 0:13.3 | uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, |
| 0:17.4 | the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. |
| 0:23.6 | I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. |
| 0:31.0 | Hello, everybody, and welcome back to misquoting Jesus. We are sticking with Paul for another week, and today we're going to be talking about his shift from someone zealously persecuting Christians |
| 0:36.8 | to being an active Christian missionary |
| 0:38.6 | and one of the most influential people in the formation of the religion. |
| 0:43.0 | What exactly prompted this shift and why did his change of heart go to such extreme lengths? |
| 0:49.0 | Before that though, but I have a question and I was mentioning before we got started that it can be a dicey one to ask academics because sometimes you get, I don't. |
| 0:58.4 | But my question is, what do you do to relax and not work? |
| 1:03.0 | Oh, my God. |
| 1:03.8 | I do. |
| 1:06.5 | Wonderful. |
| 1:07.3 | Very important. |
| 1:08.3 | Yeah, no. |
| 1:09.6 | You know, I believe in working really hard and my talent is being |
| 1:13.1 | focused and keeping focus. But when I'm not working, man, I'm not working. I believe in having a good |
| 1:19.3 | start to a day, like doing something that will make me happy to start the day. You know, |
| 1:24.6 | and what I do isn't what like most people would do. I just preface it |
| 1:28.4 | with that. So I always get up early, 6, 6.30, something like that. I get a cup of coffee, |
| 1:33.7 | and I read something that is not necessarily related to my work, like just read something |
... |
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