Scholarly consensus
Two accounts survive of the first fifteen years of Paul of Tarsus’s life as a follower of Jesus. One is his own, written in anger to the Galatians around 50 to 55 CE and sworn to under oath: “In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie” (Galatians 1:20). The other is Luke’s, written in Acts a generation later by a man who did not know him. They cover the same ground, and at point after point they do not agree. This page sets them side by side.
The call
Paul of Tarsus says that God “was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:15-16) and gives no place, no light, no voice and no companions. Acts tells the story three times (9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18), on the road to Damascus, with a light from heaven and a voice. The three tellings disagree with one another: in 9:7 the companions hear the voice but see no one; in 22:9 they see the light but do not hear the voice; in 9:7 they stand speechless, in 26:14 they all fall to the ground. In 9:6 and 22:10 Paul of Tarsus is told to go into the city and await instructions; in 26:16-18 he receives his commission on the spot.
After the call
Galatians 1:16-17: “I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.” Acts 9:19-25: he spends “several days” with the disciples in Damascus, preaches in the synagogues, and escapes the city in a basket. There is no Arabia. Paul of Tarsus’s point is that his gospel owed nothing to anyone in Jerusalem; Luke’s is that he was received into the church from the first.
The first visit to Jerusalem
Galatians 1:18-19: “Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.” He adds that he was “still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea” (1:22). Acts 9:26-30: Barnabas brings him to “the apostles”, he goes in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaks boldly, disputes with the Hellenists, and is sent away when they try to kill him. One account has a private fortnight with two men; the other a public ministry among the apostles. Acts 22:17-21 adds a vision in the Temple on this visit that Galatians does not mention.
The second visit and the council
Galatians 2:1-10: fourteen years later he goes up again, by revelation, with Barnabas and Titus, and lays his gospel before the leaders privately. They “added nothing” to him; they agreed that he should go to the gentiles and they to the circumcised, and asked only that he remember the poor. Acts 15: a public council at which, after debate, James proposes a decree binding gentile believers to abstain from food offered to idols, from blood, from what is strangled and from sexual immorality (15:20, 29). Paul of Tarsus never mentions the decree in any letter. In 1 Corinthians 8-10, writing to a church that would have been bound by it, he treats food offered to idols as a matter of conscience and knowledge, which he could not have done had he carried the decree to them. Acts 11:27-30 also records a famine-relief visit to Jerusalem between the first visit and the council, which Galatians, listing his visits under oath to prove how few there were, does not know.
Antioch
Galatians 2:11-14: at Antioch, after “certain people came from James”, Cephas withdrew from eating with the gentiles, the other Jews followed, “even Barnabas was led astray”, and Paul of Tarsus opposed Cephas “to his face, because he stood self-condemned”. Acts says nothing of this. Acts 15:36-40 records instead that Paul of Tarsus and Barnabas parted company over John Mark. Luke’s Paul of Tarsus and Luke’s Peter never quarrel; Luke’s church moves from agreement to agreement.
Circumcision
Galatians 2:3 says that Titus, a Greek, was not compelled to be circumcised, and 5:2 says that if you let yourselves be circumcised Christ will be of no benefit to you. Acts 16:3 has Paul of Tarsus circumcise Timothy, whose mother was Jewish, “because of the Jews”. Acts 21:20-26 has him take a Nazirite vow in the Temple to show that he himself keeps the law. Scholars have long noticed that the Paul of Tarsus of Acts is far more observant than the one who wrote the letters.
How historians handle it
Where the two sources disagree, historians prefer the letters. Paul of Tarsus writes first-hand, within a few years of the events, to people who were in a position to contradict him, and he swears to the account. Luke writes thirty to fifty years later, from tradition, with a purpose of his own: to show the church united under the apostles and spreading without a break from Jerusalem to Rome. This rule, stated by F. C. Baur in the 1840s and refined by John Knox in the 1950s, governs every page about Paul of Tarsus on this website. Acts is used where the letters are silent and corrected where they speak.
Why it matters here
The question is not whether Luke was careless. It is what the two sources, read honestly, show about the first community. They show a man who insisted that his gospel came to him by revelation and not from the men who had known Jesus, who kept his distance from them for years, who quarrelled with their leader in public, and whose closest ally left him. They show a Jerusalem church under James that sent men to Antioch to pull Peter back into line. The claim that Paul of Tarsus and the apostles preached one gospel in harmony is Luke’s claim. Paul of Tarsus’s own letters tell a different story. See James and the Jerusalem church and the false apostles.
Sources
- Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians, Hermeneia.
- Joseph Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, Anchor Bible.
- John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul.
- Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, on Luke’s purpose.