NOV 9, 2012
With those who would kill him waiting at each of the gates of Damascus should he try to escape, Saul of Tarsus, the man who would come to be known as Christianity’s St. Paul, fled nonetheless. Crouching in a basket, he was lowered over the city’s walls by his supporters, and he fled into the Syrian night.
It was nearly two thousand years ago that Saul, a soldier, came from Jerusalem to Damascus, dispatched and hell-bent on a mission to arrest followers of Jesus Christ—a man who, among other things, had led an affront to the ruling regime of Rome and the Jewish clergy. But instead, along the road to Damascus, his journey was interrupted by what Christian lore describes as the appearance of Jesus (post-crucifixion) in a light so strong that Saul was blinded. [full story]