Before examining the grounds upon which this elimination of Paul's early Jerusalem residence is based, it may first be observed that even such heroic measures do not really bring about the desired result; even this radical rewriting of the story of Paul's boyhood and youth will not serve to explain on naturalistic principles the origin of the Pauline Christology. Even if before his conversion Paul got no nearer to Jerusalem than Damascus, it still remains true that after his conversion he conferred with Peter and lived in more or less extended intercourse with Palestinian disciples. The total lack of any evidence of a conflict between the Christology of Paul and the views of those who had walked and talked with Jesus of Nazareth remains, for any naturalistic reconstruction, a puzzling fact. Even without the early Jerusalem residence, Paul remains too near to Jesus both temporally and geographically to have formed a conception of Him entirely without reference to the historical person. Even with their radical treatment of the Book of Acts, therefore, Bousset and Heitmüller have not succeeded at all in explaining how the Pauline Christology ever came to be attached to the Galilean prophet.
But is the elimination of the early Jerusalem residence of Paul historically justifiable? Mere congruity with a plausible theory of development will not serve to justify it. For the Jerusalem residence is strongly attested by the Book of Acts. The testimony of Acts can no longer be ruled out except for very weighty reasons; the history of recent criticism has on the whole exhibited the rise of a more and more favorable estimate of the book. And in the case of the early Jerusalem residence of Paul the testimony is so insistent and so closely connected with lifelike details that the discrediting of it involves an exceedingly radical skepticism. The presence of Paul at the stoning of Stephen is narrated in the Book of Acts in a concrete way which bears every mark of trustworthiness; the connection of Paul with Gamaliel is what might have been expected in view of the self-testimony of the apostle; the account of Paul's vision in the Temple (Acts xxii. 17–21) is based, in a manner which is psychologically very natural, upon the fact of Paul's persecuting activity in Jerusalem; the presence of Paul's sister's son in Jerusalem, attested in a part of the narrative of which the essential historicity must be universally admitted (Acts xxiii. 16–22), suggests that family connections may have facilitated Paul's residence in the city. Finally, the geographical details of the three narratives of the conversion, which place the event on a journey of Paul from Jerusalem to Damascus, certainly look as though they were founded upon genuine tradition. One of the details—the place of the conversion itself—is confirmed in a purely incidental way by the Epistle to the Galatians, and the reader has the impression that if Paul had happened to introduce other details in the Epistles the rest of the narrative in Acts would have been similarly confirmed. Except for Paul's incidental reference to Damascus in Gal. i. 17, the conversion might have been put by Heitmüller and others in a place even more conveniently remote than Damascus from the scene of Jesus' earthly labors. But the incidental confirmation of Acts at this point raises a distinct presumption in favor of the account as a whole. The main trend of modern criticism has been favorable on the whole to the tradition embodied in the accounts of the conversion; it is a very extreme form of skepticism which rejects the whole framework of the tradition by eliminating the journey from Jerusalem to Damascus.
Enough has been said to show that the early Jerusalem residence of Paul stood absolutely firm in the tradition used by the author of Acts; the author has taken it as a matter of course and woven it in with his narrative at many points. Such a tradition certainly cannot be lightly rejected; the burden of proof clearly rests upon those who would deny its truthworthiness.
The only definite proof which is forthcoming is found in Gal. i. 22, where Paul says that after his departure for Syria and Cilicia, three years after his conversion, he was "unknown by face to the churches of Judæa which are in Christ." If he had engaged in active persecution of those churches, it is argued, how could he have been personally unknown to them?
By this argument a tremendous weight is hung upon one verse. And, rightly interpreted, the verse will not bear the weight at all. In Gal. i. 22, Paul is not speaking so much of what took place before the departure for Syria and Cilicia, as of the condition which prevailed at the time of that departure and during the immediately ensuing period; he is simply drawing attention to the significance for his argument of the departure from Jerusalem. Certainly he would not have been able to speak as he does if before he left Jerusalem he had had extended intercourse with the Judæan churches, but when he says that the knowledge of the Judæan churches about him in the period just succeeding his departure from Jerusalem was a hearsay knowledge merely, it would have been pedantic for him to think about the question whether some of the members of those churches had or had not seen him years before as a persecutor.
Furthermore, it is by no means clear that the word "Judæa" in Gal. i. 22 includes Jerusalem at all. In Mark iii. 7, 8, for example, "Jerusalem" is clearly not included in "Judæa," but is distinguished from it; "Judæa" means the country outside of the capital. It may well be so also in Gal. i. 22; and if so, then the verse does not exclude a personal acquaintance of Paul with the Jerusalem Church. But even if "Judæa" is not used so as to exclude the capital, still Paul's words would be natural enough. That the Jerusalem Church formed an exception to the general assertion was suggested by the account of the visit in Jerusalem immediately preceding, and was probably well known to his Galatian readers. All that Paul means is that he went away to Syria and Cilicia without becoming acquainted generally with the churches of Judæa. It is indeed often said that since the whole point of Paul's argument in Galatians was to show his lack of contact with the pillars of the Jerusalem Church, his acquaintance or lack of acquaintance with the churches of Judæa outside of Jerusalem was unworthy of mention, so that he must at least be including Jerusalem when he speaks of Judæa. But this argument is not decisive. If, as is altogether probable, the apostles except Peter were out of the city at the time of Paul's visit, and were engaging in missionary work in Judæan churches, then acquaintance with the Judæan churches would have meant intercourse with the apostles, so that it was very much to the point for Paul to deny that he had had such acquaintance. Of course, this whole argument against the early Jerusalem residence of Paul, based on Gal. i. 22, involves a rejection of the account which the Book of Acts gives of the visit of Paul to Jerusalem three years after his conversion. If Gal. i. 22 means that Paul was unknown by sight to the Jerusalem Church, then he could not have gone in and out among the disciples at Jerusalem as Acts ix. 28 represents, but must have been in strict hiding when he was in the city. Such is the account of the matter which is widely prevalent in recent years. Not even so much correction of Acts is at all required by a correct understanding of Gal. i. 22. But it is a still more unjustifiable use of that verse when it is made to exclude even the persecuting activity of Paul in Jerusalem.
If, however, the words of Galatians are really to be taken in the strictest and most literal sense, what is to be done with Gal. i. 23, where (immediately after the words which have just been discussed) Paul says that the churches of Judæa were receiving the report, "He that persecuted us formerly is now preaching as a gospel the faith which formerly he laid waste"? What is meant by the pronoun "us" in this verse? Conceivably it might be taken in a broad sense, as referring to all disciples wherever found; conceivably, therefore, the persecution referred to by the Judæan disciples might be persecution of their brethren in the faith in Tarsus or Damascus. But that is not the kind of interpretation which has just been applied to the preceding verse, and upon which such a vast structure has been reared. It may well be urged against Heitmüller and those like him that if Paul's words are to be taken so strictly in one verse they should be taken in the same way in the other; if the "Judæa" and "unknown by face" of verse 22 are to be taken so strictly, then the "us" of verse 23 should also be taken strictly, and in that case Paul is made to contradict himself, which of course is absurd. Verse 23 certainly does not fully confirm the representation of Acts about the persecuting activity of Paul in Judæa, but at any rate it tends to confirm that representation at least as strongly as verse 22 tends to discredit it.[29]
Thus the early Jerusalem residence of Paul is strongly attested by the Book of Acts, and is thoroughly in harmony with everything that Paul says about his Pharisaic past. It is not surprising that Bousset has now receded from his original position and admits that Paul was in Jerusalem before his conversion and engaged in persecution of the Jerusalem Church.
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