Why would Saul of Tarsus throw away wealth and prominence in Judaism and stop persecuting Christians to start preaching about Jesus as Paul, and himself be persecuted, imprisoned, and ultimately beheaded?
Also, any general thoughts on him? He seems to be somewhat divisive amongst Christians for some reason
>>1367818
Depends on whether or not you believe he was actually persecuted or not. There's sweet fuck all for independent confirmation of what happened to the apostles.
Even without that though, Paul is very easy to explain, he either had the sun bake his brain or fell off his donkey and hit his head on a rock or some shit.
>>1367833
>he either had the sun bake his brain or fell off his donkey and hit his head on a rock or some shit.
Or he found a devoted but weakly led cult and saw it as an opportunity.
>>1367843
Opportunity for what? His life was already set
>>1367848
The idea that he was even a pharaiee is in dispute. The story of the road to Tarsus makes no sense. a Pharisees would not be taking orders from the Sanhedrin nor would the Sanhedrin have authority to arrest Christians in tarsus.
Historically speaking, there is no reason to believe it actually happened
Or he just had some kind of episode.
Think about it. You're traveling around the Levant hunting down Christians, so naturally you've got Christianity and Jesus on the brain. You have a hallucination. The rest is history.
>>1367818
From a slightly liberal Christian perspective:
As to your first question, he did so because he had a vision of the One True Lord, Christ Jesus, and the spirit moved him to preach. Of course secular explanations, such as delusion or simple fanaticism for a new movement, can be charged, but as a believing Christian the only answer is that the Gospel tells the Truth of his path.
As to your second point: Paul spoke very, very deeply within his context. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and nothing he said was *wrong*, but it was all very contextual, and thus is not necessarily true.
We accept that everything the Gospel teaches is truth, but truth communicated by Human authors in their socio-cultural context. That doesn't mean what they say is wrong, just that it doesn't *necessarily* carry over to our context (Biblical support for polygamy and slavery are, after all, unsupported by nearly every modern Church on the same grounds). In specific, Paul's view on women and homosexuals are controversial, because the experience of less conservative Christians indicates they may have been more contextual truths than Christian truths.
