What Saint Saul Really Saw

If you ask most people what happened during Saul’s so-called conversion experience on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, they might tell you that he was riding down the road to Damascus when he saw a vision of Jesus, heard a voice from heaven, and was blinded by a bright light. This is technically true (the best kind of true), but the Lukan author doesn’t tell the story in quite that way. In both the description of the actual event (Acts 9:3–9) and in the re-narrations of the event that follow (Acts 9:26–30, 22:6–16), certain details are omitted or altered. These changes have an effect on how the Lukan audience experiences the story. Let me show you what I mean.

First, let’s look at how the event itself is narrated. Here’s how the NRSV renders Acts 9:3–9:

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Ok, so let’s make some observations. First, a point that really isn’t my main point, but that I think is worth mentioning: there are no horses in this story. My impression is that most people envision Saul riding a horse. I’m not sure where this idea comes from, but a common mental image features Saul being so overcome by the surprise of the light that he literally falls off his horse. But read it again. No horsie. No donkeys, even. Everything seems to indicate that this group is traveling on foot. Not incredibly significant, but worth noting.1

Second, what does Saul actually see? Acts 9:3—4 relates that a light flashed around him, he fell to the ground, and heard a voice. This may seem overly pedantic, but bear with me. The narrator never says that Saul saw Jesus. Saul experiences a bright light (the implication is that he does in fact see the light) and hears a voice. The light seems to be the stimulus that removes Saul’s vision, so it seems fair to say that the narrator describes Saul seeing the light, immediately going blind, and then hearing a voice. There’s some irony here. In a sequence of events that features a lot of visions (Ananias’s vision in Acts 9:10–16 and Saul’s later “vision” [more on that later] that’s reported to Ananias in 9:12), the one person who doesn’t actually have a “vision” is Saul. In fact, Saul’s “vision” is characterized by
 well
 a lack of vision.

Third, after Saul’s blindness has been established, what does the audience see? At the beginning of Acts 9, the audience is focalized through Saul, meaning that our perspective is mediated by his character.2 In other words, we see through Saul’s eyes. Saul is blinded by the light and so, because we Saul serves as our point of focalization, we do not see Jesus. We, like Saul, only hear Jesus’s voice; the appearance of Jesus is not directly narrated to us. From Acts 9:9 onward, our sensory connection to Saul is severed. Saul is blind and so we no longer see through his eyes. Instead, we are refocalized towards Ananias, who does receive an actual vision. This vision is much more straightforward. There is no blinding light, the identity of the Lord is clear, and the dialogue between Ananias and the Lord is much more in line with other biblical visions. But note that there is another vision at play: Saul’s vision of Ananias. The Lord tells Ananias that Saul has had a vision of him. This is an unnarrated vision that we, the audience, are not given access to except through the words spoken to Ananias. We might expect to follow Saul through his three days of blindness (Acts 9:9), observing him as he receives his vision of Ananias. But these events aren’t directly narrated to us.3 Instead, we are given a second-hand account through Ananias’s own vision. So, from our perspective, Saul, who doesn’t have any vision, is truly vision-less.4

This irony is strengthened by the way that Saul’s experience is re-narrated indirectly by Barnabas in Acts 9:27. Saul is brought to the apostles in Jerusalem and Barnabas vouches for him:

But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus.

For the sake of clarity, I understand this as Barnabas explaining Saul’s story to the apostles, i.e., Barnabas describes Saul’s experience on the road, not Saul himself. We might expect something like Acts 22:6–16, where Paul re-tells the story of what happened on the road in more or less the same way as the original narration in Acts 9. Barnabas’s intervention here seems odd. But think of it this way: Saul’s experience of blindness is front and center in this sequence. How is a recently-blinded man supposed to describe what he saw? He can’t. Nevertheless, the narrator tells us that Barnabas tells the apostles about what Saul saw on the road. Saul never says that he saw Jesus, not even in his re-telling in Acts 22. It’s possible that “seeing” is simply a shorthand standing in for Saul’s experience as a whole (note Ananias saying in Acts 9:17 that Jesus “appeared” to Saul), but I do think it’s valuable to make note of

  1. what Saul is said to actually experience (i.e., the light and the voice)
  2. what Saul later says about that same experience (non-visual language), and
  3. how other characters talk about that same experience (visual language).

Given these shifts in perspective and sensory information, we might ask what the Lukan author is trying to accomplish by telling the story in this way. One possible explanation is that re-narrating the story indirectly through the character of Barnabas avoids repetition. Presenting the scene unaltered for a second time could be received as redundant and artless. However, Peter’s re-narration in Acts 11 of his vision from Acts 10 suggests that the Lukan author is not averse to wholesale repetition. Peter’s report to the Christians in Jerusalem in Acts 11:1–10 features considerable verbatim repetition from the narrator’s original description in Acts 10:9–16 and doesn’t significantly diverge from the previous narration. Peter’s version is understandably a bit reformatted due to the shift to a first-person perspective, but the language is similar enough to constitute significant repetition. This is especially relevant since both Acts 9 and Acts 11 relate divine visions that could benefit from a more or less direct retelling. Peter’s re-narration is also described as áŒ€ÏÎŸÎŹÎŒÎ”ÎœÎżÏ‚, or from the beginning, which sets up an expectation of continuity. Admittedly, the repetition seen in Peter’s case doesn’t completely rule out avoiding redundancy as an explanation for the alterations in Acts 9. Authors don’t always behave in consistent ways and there may be another explanation for the presence of repetition in one context but not another. However, I think the situation in Acts 11 is at least a clue that the Lukan author doesn’t completely despise that level of duplication and displays a willingness to employ repetition if it serves a rhetorical purpose such as Peter’s direct reporting of a divine message.

So what’s the deal? I think that Saul’s temporary blindness may be a clue. Saul’s attention is directed away from what he can see and towards what he can hear. This is reminiscent of the story of the transfiguration in Luke 9:28—36. In that scene, Peter, John, and James are hyperfocused on the presence of Moses and Elijah alongside the transfigured Jesus, whose appearance was changed by a bright flash of light (Lk 9:29—30). A voice from heaven disrupts this fixation, instructing the disciples to “listen to him” (Lk 9:35). So, while the disciples are concerned with the vision of prophetic glory before them, the heavenly voice redirects them to “listen” to the words Jesus had been teaching them just previously, i.e., the necessity of Jesus’s own suffering and death and the life of suffering discipleship that his followers are called to (Lk 9:21—27). In a similar way, Saul is confronted by a bright flash of light and his attention is unavoidably redirected towards a voice from heaven. In this instance, the voice is Jesus himself. Saul is forced to come to terms with what this voice tells him and only regains his sight when another voice, that of Ananias, tells him that he will be filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:17). In Acts 9, we as readers aren’t permitted to see the risen Jesus. Our vision is taken just like Saul’s. Instead, we have to sit on the ground with Saul and focus our attention on Jesus’s words. Just like the heavenly voice at the transfiguration said, we and Saul must “listen to him” and obey his instructions to get up and go to where the Spirit of God is at work. In this way, Luke uses language of sight and hearing to shape the story that is being told and how we as readers interact with that story. Through various visions and voices, the attention of both the reader and the characters within the story is directed towards the purpose of God that is being accomplished through Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit.

So what did Saint Saul see? Nothing! But what Saul heard changed everything. Even though Jesus was no longer present on earth, his words reached Saul to bring him into God’s ongoing work of renewing Israel through the Spirit.

Footnotes

  1. I do wonder if this is partially a conflation of Acts 9 with the story of Martin Luther being thrown off of his horse during a lightning storm. Just a hunch. ↩

  2. For more on focalization, see the living handbook of narratology. ↩

  3. Interestingly, Saul’s vision of Ananias also doesn’t make the cut when the apostle is retelling this story in Acts 22:6–16. ↩

  4. Another curious detail is that Ananias isn’t directly told about Saul’s experience on the road, but somehow knows about it by the time he meets Saul, thus his words in Acts 9:17, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me.” ↩