Some Notes on Paul's Conversion

Abstract

One of the most puzzling aspects of our much overworked field of New Testament studies – puzzling particularly at a time when individualism and personal religious experience have become central themes in our culture – is the fact that so little attention has been given to the most obvious, indeed the only clearly accessible instance of a personal religious experience in the New Testament. While some exegetes have shunned psychological contributions almost as if they might somehow impugn the authenticity of the event itself, others have undoubtedly reacted to the excesses of earlier attempts to psychoanalyse Paul's personality. But whatever the justification, the decision to follow a literary path, to the exclusion of the psychological, has meant that exegetes have lost touch with the dynamic, experiential dimension of Paul's conversion and have been forced to isolate it from other facets of his career.