It is very unlikely (in spite of Johannes Weiss) that St. Paul ever saw Jesus in the flesh.  But he did come in contact with the little Christian community at Jerusalem.  These disciples at first attempted to live as strict members of the Jewish Church.  They knew that the coming Messiah was their crucified Master, but this belief involved no rupture with Judaism.  So at least they thought themselves; the Sanhedrin saw more clearly what the new movement meant.  The crisis came when numerous ‘Hellenists’ attached themselves to the Church—­Jews of the Dispersion, from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere.  A threatened rupture between these and the Palestinian Christians was averted by the appointment of seven deacons or charity commissioners, among whom Stephen soon became prominent by the dangerously ‘liberal’ character of his teaching.  Philo gives important testimony to the existence of a ‘liberal’ school among the Jews of the Dispersion, who, under pretext of spiritualising the traditional law, left off keeping the Sabbath and the great festivals, and even dispensed with the rite of circumcision.  Thus the admission of Gentiles on very easy terms into the Church was no new idea to the Palestinian Jews; it was known to them as part of the shocking laxity which prevailed among their brethren of the Dispersion.  With Stephen, this kind of liberalism seemed to have entered the group of ‘disciples.’  He was accused of saying that Jesus was to destroy the temple and change the customs of Moses.  In his bold defence he admitted that in his view the Law was valid only for a limited period, which would expire so soon as Jesus returned as Messiah.  This was quite enough for the Sanhedrin.  They stoned Stephen, and compelled the ‘disciples’ to disperse and fly for their lives.  Only the Apostles, whose devotion to the Law was well known, were allowed to remain.  This last fact, briefly recorded in Acts, is important as an indication that the persecution was directed only against the liberalising Christians, and that these were the great majority.  Saul, it seems, had no quarrel with the Twelve; his hatred and fanaticism were aroused against a sect of Hellenist Jews who openly proclaimed that the Law had been abrogated in advance by their Master, who, as Saul observed with horror, had incurred the curse of the Law by dying on a gibbet.  All the Pharisee in him was revolted; and he led the savage heretic-hunt which followed the execution of Stephen.

What caused the sudden change which so astonished the survivors among his victims?  To suppose that nothing prepared for the vision near Damascus, that the apparition in the sky was a mere ’bolt from the blue,’ is an impossible theory.  The best explanation is furnished by a study of the Apostle’s character, which we really know very well.  The author of the Epistles was certainly not a man who could watch a young saint being battered to death by howling fanatics, and feel no emotion.  Stephen’s speech may have made him indignant; his heroic death,