Apr 14, 2012 -- 7:03AM, davelaw40 wrote:

If there was a persecution of Christians by the Jerusalem heirarchy-it was early on in the Jesus movements history and ended quickly. 

?

Where do you get this?  Certainly not from Scripture (confer Acts 21-25, etc.)

Apr 14, 2012 -- 5:59AM, Kwinters wrote:

In Did Jesus Exist, Ehrman dates the conversion of Paul to the early 30s in part of his refutation of the allegation that Jesus was purely a mythical invention.

What have other sources cited as the date of Paul's conversion? 

Using extra-Biblical sources and absolute dating (e.g., the reign of Aretas), it had to be pre-40 AD.

Layering Scripture in, I agree with others here that it was very early in the nascent church's history (likely within 1 year of the crucifixion.)

Ehrman's dating process:

'To give us a rock solid start, we can say that Paul must have converted sometime after the death of Jesus around 30 CE and sometime before 40 CE.  The latter date is based on the fact that in 2 Cor 11:32 Paul indicates that King Aretas of the Nabateans was determined to prosecute Paul for being a Christian. Aretas died around the year 40. So Paul converted sometime in the 30s CE. When scholars crunch all the numbers that Paul mentions, it appears that he must have converted early in the 30s, say, the year 32 or 33, just two or three years after the death of Jesus.'

To bolsert his argument againts a purely mythical Christ, he goes on:

'This means that if Paul went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and James three years after his conversion, he would have seen them, received the traditions that he later gives in his letters, around the middle of the decade, say the year 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited, of course, were older than that and so must date to just a couple years or so after Jesus's death.

All this makes it as clear as day that Jesus was known to have lived and died almost immediately after the traditional date of his death. We do not have to wait for the Gospel of Mark around 70 CE to hear about the historical Jesus, as mythicists are fond of claiming. This evidence from Paul dovetails perfectly with what we found from the Gospel traditions whose oral sources almost certainly also go all the way back into the 30s to Roman Palestine.  Paul too shows that just a few years after Jesus's life his followers were talking about the things he said, did and experienced as a Jewish teacher in Palestine who was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jewish authorities. This is a powerful confluence of evidence: the sources of the Gospels and the accounts of our earliest Christian author. It is hard to explain this confluence apart from the view that Jesus certainly existed.'

Apr 15, 2012 -- 6:42AM, Blü wrote:

KW

'It is hard to explain this confluence apart from the view that Jesus certainly existed.'

Except that from our point of view no one says anything about Jesus until Paul ~50 CE.

But lots was said. Clearly lots was being said because the Jewish Temple authorities started to act, hence Paul's initial contact with the Jesus movement before his own conversion.

Saul did NOT "'convert' to Christianity" ...  

He was a "Messianic 'Jew'" ... (see, e.g., Romans 9-11) ...

Apr 15, 2012 -- 5:06PM, Kwinters wrote:

Apr 15, 2012 -- 6:42AM, Blü wrote:

KW

It's a substantial pity that Ehrman gives no details of the additional number-crunching he mentions.  I've complained before that too frequently HJ claims are made but not supported with evidence.  I'm quite fond of Ehrman but such omissions touch a nerve.

We have two biblical sources that may tell us of Paul's conversion to Christianity - Paul's own account in his epistles, and Acts of the Apostles, written at least 60 years after the event. The two accounts are overall quite contradictory, although Acts goes into some detail that is not in the epistles. Given the considerable delay before Acts was written, it is reasonable to accept Paul's account wherever the two differ in any significant way.

Paul's account: Galatians

Paul did not say how he was converted and did not mention a vision of any sort. However, he unambiguously said that when he became a Christian he did not talk to anyone about it.

Galatians provides information to estimate when Paul's conversion may have occurred. Soon after his conversion to Christianity, Paul spent 3 years in Damascus, but escaped the city when the governor under Aretas, king of the Nabateans from 9 BCE to 40 CE, had a garrison deployed to arrest him because of his Christian activities. Paul's conversion could not have occurred later than about 36 CE and was probably somewhat earlier.

wiki.answers.com/Q/How_and_when_did_St_P...