A Disciple in Damascus

The Book of Acts has three accounts of Saul of Tarsus’ dramatic change of attitude toward and later intent to join the budding new Jewish messianic sect (Acts 9:3–19; 22:6–16; 26:12–18; cf. Gal 1:11–17) that was growing rather rapidly (Acts 2:41; 9:31) but that he had been intent on eradicating. The part in Paul's change of heart played by Ananias, a Damascene disciple, does not appear in the last of the three accounts in Acts. It is recounted fully in the first (chapter 9) while in the second (chapter 22) the experience on the way to Damascus and then in the city is cursorily recounted by Paul in Jerusalem in a speech the Roman tribune allowed him to give on the steps of the tribune's barracks there. In the Jerusalem speech Paul gives a cursory account of his experience on the way to Damascus and then of his life-changing visit with Ananias in Damascus that is crucial to the whole story. However, Paul in the course of his trials in Jerusalem and Caesarea tells the truncated story in the later chapters, but omits details told by the earlier narrator in chapter 9.

Despite the debate that obtained for centuries about Paul's so-called conversion, it has become clear that Saul the Pharisee did not leave Judaism but changed rather into an adherent of a new messianic Judaism of the pre-70 period, indeed into a believer that the messiah had come (Ambrose). Not only so, he became convinced after his retreat “into Arabia” and return to the congregation in Damascus, that God had set him apart before birth to be an apostle to the gentiles (Gal 1:15–17). Paul's belief that he had been set apart before birth for his new role in Judaism he drew directly from the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 1:5), but in Paul's echo of the prophet's self-understanding the question of Paul's own pre-existence arises. It thus obviates the issue concerning early belief in Jesus’ pre-existence. Not only so, in the massive literature coming from the pre-rabbinic period one reads of the pre-existence of Torah, Moses, Enoch, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others (Hurtado: 743–46).

In the fuller account in Acts 9 the Apostle Paul tells of hearing a voice on the road ask him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” One who knows Scripture, as the early followers of Jesus would indeed have known it, cannot but recall the strikingly similar question that the young David put to King Saul when David and his pal Abishai paid a call on the old king in his tent while Saul and his army led by Abner all slept soundly (I Sam 26:7). Abishai wanted to kill Saul right there in the tent, but David refused, not wanting to kill an anointed of the Lord. The young David's aspirations would have prevented him doing such a rash deed as assassinating the Lord's own anointed if he himself indeed wanted someday to replace Saul. One doesn't kill kings who are monarchs “by divine right,” especially young aspirants who some day might themselves be as vulnerable. David suggested instead that they take with them Saul's spear and waterskin as “negative calling cards,” as it were (26:7–12; cf. Gen 38:18).

Later when David and Abishai hid some distance from Saul's camp, and Abner awoke, David chided the latter for not guarding the king as he should have, claiming that he had accidently chanced on Saul's spear and waterskin, offering them as evidence that somebody had broken in to kill Saul, and holding them up so that Abner could clearly see them. Saul himself then awoke, and recognizing David's voice asked if it was indeed David. At that point David asked Saul, “Why does my lord pursue his servant?” The two questions, the one the young David asked King Saul back then and the one Jesus asked Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, are in essence the same, for the words in both Hebrew and Greek meaning “pursue” can also mean “persecute.” Anyone who knows Scripture, whether in Hebrew or Greek (LXX), as Saul certainly did (whether the author of Acts knew Hebrew or not), can hardly miss the echo of the question the young David put to King Saul in what Jesus asked Saul of Tarsus in the story in Acts, and would hardly miss the point:

But the trauma Saul experienced on “the Road to Damascus” barely introduces the story of the reversal of conviction Saul experienced. In fact, it left Saul in shock and blinded, so that he had to be led the rest of the way into the city, but he was still Saul of Tarsus. The important part of the full story, in fact, occurs not on the road to Damascus but after Saul was taken there blind and ill. The narrator tells of a vision of Jesus experienced by a disciple of “the Way” who lived in Damascus, not unlike Saul's vision on the way over. In his vision the Damascene disciple is instructed to go visit the patient who has been given lodging in the home of a man named Judas in the Jewish quarter. Ananias was understandably reluctant to obey Jesus’ commission in the “vision” because he had heard from many about how zealous this Saul of Tarsus had been in trying to eradicate the sect, and that he had come over from Jerusalem with authority from the high priest to arrest members of the sect and take them back to Jerusalem, for a fate similar probably to Stephen's (Acts 7:58). In a manner that commands the attention of the reader or hearer, the narrator provides a crucial clue to what gave Ananias the courage to obey.

Ananias had an experience of Jesus, not dissimilar to Saul's but in the city after Saul had arrived, instructing him to make a pastoral call on the offending but now smitten visitor. Folk like myself who have no psychic abilities or mystic tendencies find it difficult to relate to the idea of the mechanics of a personal vision. Perhaps it might be helpful to speak of Ananias's vision in the terms of what happens when one hears news such as the community would already have heard about Saul's purpose in coming to Damascus. They were understandably scared and apprehensive about the purpose of his trip over from Jerusalem. Then they would later have heard that he'd been in some kind of accident on the way over in which he was blinded and being led the rest of the way into the city. If one is committed to the beliefs and purposes of the sect, then that commitment becomes the vehicle for hearing all such news. But the fear with which they had heard news about Saul's mission in the first place was probably considerably mitigated when they heard about his being somehow stricken ill on his way over. Most probably even hoped that he would not be able to carry out his declared intentions. They were on edge in any case and keen to hear any good news that might come with travelers entering the city, and alert to various possibilities.

Anyone who has lived in the Near East for any length of time knows that news travels as fast as those who journey from one place to another. In antiquity folk traveled either by foot or by hoof, as some in that part of the world still travel today. Only the better-off could afford riding on an ass or a cart drawn by some animal (cf. Acts 8:27–28). Today much travel is done by the service or scheduled taxis that depart when full of passengers and move between cities, dropping off and picking up fares as seats become available. These travelers often provide in the people's minds a more reliable source of hard information than the radio or television, which are state-controlled and, frankly, not usually attuned to what is important to locals. Travelers then share news learned en route when arriving at their destinations.

Travelers to Damascus would have provided the news that members of the sect needed. And if there was an incident of the sort described in the Book of Acts, travelers passing the scene would have been eager to pass on the news upon arrival. Most of the sect in Damascus who got the earlier news would not only have been very apprehensive but some probably would have started planning on how to escape Saul's attention. They had heard about his role as witness to the stoning of Stephen, and they knew what kind of person he was and of his purpose in making the trip, breathing threats against them as he came. The later news, that he was injured and might take a while to heal, would have given them time to discuss and plan how to deal with the new situation, figuring the threat was nonetheless still pending.

Let us suppose that one member of the little Christian community in Damascus named Ananias had a working image of the Christ in his head, a very active mental concept of Christ, a kind of phronesis, or mindset, as Paul would later call it in his letter to the young church at Philippi (Phil 2:5; cf. Luke 1:17). Ananias would interpret whatever news they got about Saul through his working image of Jesus in his mind or heart. The text suggests that only one follower of The Way in Damascus had the vision, and that, we'll see, was sufficient. Scripture is full of stories about how God used just one person to turn history on its head, and that is surely the function of Saul's “vision” out on the road. Saul, being well educated in Jewish theology and tradition, as a student of Gamliel (=Gamaliel: Acts 5:33–39, 22:3), would undoubtedly upon reflection have understood his arresting experience on the road as ominous, perhaps visionary.

Ananias heard the news of Saul's indisposition and arrival differently from others in Damascus. Ananias was scared too, as the narrator makes clear, but he also had an urge develop inside him about what to do, and what Jesus would have him do on this occasion. He knew he might be called on to make the same kind of witness Stephen had made earlier back in Jerusalem. But he must have asked himself if his role was simply to be brave enough to die a martyr. Maybe he could make a more positive witness somehow, even if he still had to die. Saul was blind and sick nearby there in the Jewish quarter, so maybe he needed to hear that Jesus could heal the sick, even the blind (Luke 7:22 echoing Isaiah 58:5–6 and 61:1; Sanders 1975a). Ananias figured that all Saul had heard so far was what a threat the Jesus sect was to the Jewish state and religion because of the rising tension with Rome and the increasing rumors of a serious Jewish revolt.

Jesus’ followers were more of a threat than the messianic Essenes (or whoever they were) who had the good sense to go live deep in the desert where they could think and do what they wanted to and not bother the authorities with their crazy ideas. But these Jesus people lived and practiced what they believed where they were a real threat, at least as Saul believed, because they were trying to get people to change the way they actually thought about life and living under Roman oppression and dominance. And he knew that Rome did not want people under their rule to start thinking differently about the so-called pax romana. Changing the way people act or live is one thing, but changing the way they actually think about living under Roman colonization could be very dangerous.

Ananias had a clear vision of the situation, the text says. He was convinced enough by his Jesus-phronesis to do what he had been taught Jesus did, even with Roman soldiers and collaborators, and what Jesus actually taught when he was here about God being the God of All (elô'ah ha-kol). Perhaps Ananias had a kind of vision like those of the prophets of old who put themselves at great risk in their time to say what they were convinced, by their vision/concept of the monotheizing process, they needed to say. The prophets back then had explained that the reason they felt they had the authority to speak in God's name, when Israel was being threatened with extinction by Mesopotamian forces, was that they had had a sort of vision or phronesis, so to speak, back in their time, a strong conviction that God was the God of All, even Assyria and Babylonia, and not just a national deity (Sanders 2009; Sanders 2014: 28–46). Ananias's phronesis apparently proved just as strong.

One might call it a strong working image of God's Christ that Ananias had in his head, or heart. It must have been a forceful one to overcome the instinctive fear the news about Saul's mission otherwise caused. The story says that Jesus and Ananias had a conversation (Acts 9:10–16). And it makes it clear not only that Ananias was scared, but that even so he felt that he had to do something, even go make a call on his enemy, the stricken visitor from Jerusalem. It was compelling enough, in any case, to set him on his way over to Straight Street, instead of just cowering, waiting at home for Saul to get well and probably resume his mission. Maybe there was an alternative to the martyrdom that Stephen suffered. He'd go see. It wouldn't be easy, but neither would waiting around to be stoned like Stephen be easy. And if it meant martyrdom either way, this at least would provide him a chance to monotheize on a personal level, that is, love his enemy–-the way Jesus said they should (Luke 6:27–36; Matt 5:43–48; Sanders 2014: 77–81).

What could possibly have been a vision strong enough to give Ananias the courage actually to make the call on an enemy who wanted to kill him? Maybe it was as strong as the prophets’ vision that Israel's God was God also of her enemies. The story goes on to say that Ananias actually went over to Judas's house to visit Saul lying on a bed there. Saul was blind and ill; so the sick room was probably quiet, even dark. Ananias approached the bed, laid his hands on Saul's forehead, and said quietly, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way over here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight.” The text says something like scales fell from Saul's eyes and he could see again. Again, I don't know from scales, but it is clear according to what happened thereafter that Saul gained from Ananias's daring visit a totally different vision of who these Jesus freaks were and what they stood for (Acts 11:26). The first thing Saul saw when his eyes opened was one person totally alone, one he was supposed to arrest, one he had called enemy, who stood there with his hand on his forehead calling him “Brother.” He'd never seen or heard anything like that in his life, but it helped him see life and himself in a way he'd never before thought possible. Ananias was totally alone, unarmed as it were, with a combination of fear and love in his eyes. Saul had undoubtedly never seen anyone who had such courage and conviction that he put himself in mortal danger like that to practice what he believed, actually to help Saul see and heal.

What Ananias saw, on the other hand, was a man he had feared, lying there vulnerable and probably still ill, but with new sight able perhaps to arrest him on the spot. I imagine Ananias, having fulfilled his mission, wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. He had confessed in his conversation with Jesus who sent him to visit Saul how scared he was. Mission accomplished. Time to go home. How did he know Saul would not simply resume his stated mission to eradicate the sect that meant so much to Ananias?

But as Ananias made his way to the door, Saul might have said, “Hey, wait a minute, will you? I'd like to know where you got the guts to come in here and call me Brother. I appreciate a man who has such courage, and I'd like to know how you dared come here and help me.” I imagine Ananias might then have paused at the door, peered back into the sick room, and asked, “You really want to know?” Saul would have responded, “Yes, I want to know. Come tell me.”

I imagine Ananias might slowly have returned to the bedside and said, “Well, there's a little poem we learned at our meetings that I recited to myself again and again as I walked over here, and that's what gave me the courage to come see you.” Saul would then have said, “Recite it for me, would you? I'd like to hear it.”

We need to pause at this point and note that Ernst Lohmeyer, a NT scholar, published a thesis some time ago that might help at this point (Lohmeyer). Lohmeyer suggested that the Song of Christ, or Carmen Christi, that Paul later shared with the Church at Philippi, had probably been composed originally in Hebrew or Aramaic by an early Palestinian disciple. That was as much as Lohmeyer ventured about the Philippian Song. Others have suggested that Paul composed the poem himself, but since the poem reverts so well back into Hebrew (or Aramaic) it seems likely that Paul indeed learned it from an early Jesus follower.

We can well imagine that Saul would supposedly have learned it after he had joined the sect, perhaps from Ananias himself. It might have been about the time Saul changed his name, in traditional biblical manner, to Paul (Acts 13:9). Anyway, Lohmeyer did not offer a name for the disciple who taught it to Paul, nor did he relate it to this story in Acts, but I suggest that it might well have been our Ananias.

Ananias might well have responded to Saul's request in the following way:

Ananias would have gone on to explain, “I just kept reciting that poem again and again on the way over here until I felt I could come in here and offer you some comfort. I mean, if Jesus could come all the way down from the throne of God and live our lives with us on earth, persecuted and oppressed for what he taught, and died on a cross because he told the truth and was not afraid to do so, then I figured the least I could do was come over here and call you Brother. You see, he taught us to love everybody because all people, even enemies, belong to God.”

We can't be sure, of course, that all this happened exactly this way, but from what Acts and Paul have left us to ponder it seems quite possible. The experience would have caused Saul to rethink his whole position with regard to the sect–rethink, indeed, his whole life. The text says that when he got well he joined the congregation in Damascus (Acts 9:19–22), made a personal retreat in Arabia, then rejoined the congregation in Damascus (Gal 1:17), whereupon he started himself to preach about Christ, confounding his mainstream compatriots by his dramatic change of identity, and by his preaching (Acts 22:22–24).

Later while he was in prison (probably at Rome) he wrote to the little church he had founded in Philippi about his experiences and what brought about his arrest. He exhorted them to stand firm, “striving side by side with one mind (mia psuché) for the faith of the good news we have ourselves heard, and be in no way intimidated by opponents” (Phil 1:27–28). In doing so he would have wanted to share with them the poem Ananias had recited to him when he was sick at Judas's house back in Damascus.

It is especially poignant then to note that Paul in the beginning of his letter to the little church at Philippi admits that his imprisonment had brought him to contemplate whether he himself was facing martyrdom, or worse, suicide (Phil 1:19–24; Holloway). One cannot but reflect on Ananias's deliberations in himself whether to accept martyrdom like Stephen's upon Saul's arrival in Damascus, or be bold enough to go pay a visit on his enemy and witness to his understanding of the Christ event by reciting the poem he'd learned in the meetings of the small but growing Jesus sect in Syria.

He would have introduced the poem by reflecting on what Ananias had done for him in Damascus, anticipating it with something like the following: “If there is any courage by being in Christ, any strength stemming from (Christ's self-giving) love, any sharing in the Spirit (of Christ), any compassion and sympathy for ‘others,’ … have the same phronesis Christ had. … Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility look at others as better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but to the interests of ‘the other.’ And you should have in you the same phronesis that Jesus himself had” (Phil 2:1–5). All these qualities that Paul attributes to being in Christ were those he had seen in Ananias, indeed those attributed to God himself in the early Greek translations of Jewish Scripture. He thus claims that those divine thoughts and qualities are now available to those who believe in the Christ.

Paul's use of the word phroneo, bidding his followers to think a certain way recalls crucial passages in Scripture that express what having God's Torah, or God's way of thinking, as the way the prophets thought in their time and wanted the people to think as well. Torah means far more than simply “law.” A mere glance at the Pentateuch shows that Torah is made up of both haggadah and halachah, or gospel and law–-God's story and God's law. Torah for the Jew means God's most precious gift that all peoples will flow to Jerusalem to learn (Isa 2:2–3) how the God of All actually thinks (Sanders 1975b; Sanders 1977).

In Isaiah 55:8–9 the exilic prophet offered as explanation for God's grace (in allowing any and all exiles, even those who had defected during exile the right to return home) that God's thoughts are not human thoughts and ways. God's thinking is as different from human thinking as the heavens are above the earth, the prophet said. The Septuagint translates the Hebrew words for “thoughts” with forms of the Greek diánoia that Luke uses to speak of hearts burning within the disciples when Jesus opened Scripture for them on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:31–32). The Septuagint uses the same words based on the Greek dianoigo at Isaiah 55:8–9, as well as the more common Greek noun, boule.

More importantly, all the pre-exilic prophets (except perhaps Amos) argued that God's judgments against his people executed through the imperial expansionist policies of the late Iron Age Mesopotamian powers would also be transformative for the people if they took them to heart as God's desire to instill God's ways of thinking into the people themselves. Jeremiah promised that the adversity would be a divine surgery in which God would suture his Torah onto the heart of the people collectively (Jer 31:31–34). Ezekiel claimed much the same when he argued that the adversity in the hands of God would effect a new heart in the people and implant a new spirit in them so that they could think God's Torah thoughts themselves (Ezek 36:26–27). Hosea had his way of saying much the same (Hos 2:14, 6:1; cf. Mic 6:8).

Mind you, these were the prophets whose messages were despised in the pre-war days when they actually lived and preached back home, but were upon recollection in Exile and thereafter heard in an entirely new way because they explained how God could let old Israel and Judah be destroyed (cf. Deut 29–31), in order to transform them into a new Israel that became Early Judaism into which both Jesus of Nazareth and Saul of Tarsus were born and nurtured. A metaphor Jeremiah used was that of circumcising the heart of the people collectively (Jer 4:4; Deut 10:16 and 30:6). The heart was viewed in both biblical Hebrew and Greek as the seat of thinking, not emotion as we do today; that was expressed metaphorically as the bowels and/or wombs (Jer 4:19; Phil 1:8, 2:1; Col 3:12). God was implanting through adversity a kind of phronesis of God's own Torah thinking into the remnant, those in whose hearts God's way of thinking took root (Isa 51:7), the opposite of those who were still stubborn of heart (Isa 46:12) and resisted Torah thinking (Sanders 2005: 70–88; Sanders 2014: 28–46).

Paul, knowing well the prophetic literature in both Hebrew and Greek, would then have copied his Greek translation of the poem into his letter to the followers of The Way in Philippi, encouraging them to be as loving toward those who threaten them as Ananias had been to him back in Damascus. Reflecting himself upon the same poem, he made his decision: like Ananias he would face possible death but only by continuing to witness to what God had done in Christ by “remaining in the flesh … so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus … “ (Phil 1:24–26).

The otherwise unknown disciple in Damascus, Ananias, by hearing the news that his enemy, Saul of Tarsus, had had an accident and was blind and ill, and by understanding it through the phronesis of God's Christ in his heart, instilled by reciting a little poem he'd learned in their meetings in Damascus, took his life in his hands and went over to Judas's house and called his enemy “Brother.” And in doing so Ananias in effect gave the apostle Paul the courage and boldness he himself later needed when depressed by imprisonment in Rome for preaching precisely what Ananias had taught him about Jesus. After all, Jesus did command his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matt 5:44; Luke 6:27–28, 7:22). To be able to do that one would have to become telos, “perfect” like God, being able to empathize with the other as also God's creature, thus qualifying to become “sons of God in heaven” (Matt 5:45), indeed members of God's own heavenly council whose job was to see that justice was done on earth (Ps 82; cf. Job 1–2; Isa 40:1–11, et al.).

Having such a phronesis (or God's Torah thinking) in his heart had a rippling effect when Ananias made his bold decision to go show the kind of love he'd learned about Jesus, even to the dreaded Saul of Tarsus. Ananias would have had no idea that his decision to pay a visit to his enemy would have been the cause for Saul of Tarsus becoming the Apostle Paul, who would later share it in his correspondence that would be read by many for two millennia to come.