Week 42 Acts
The story of Paul’s Damascus Road meeting with the Lord is told three times in Acts.
I read the third one today, the second yesterday, the first the day before that. The three aren’t exactly the same.
One difference I noticed today was what the Lord said to Paul on the road. I likely noticed it because in my bible the Lord’s words are in red ink.
I didn’t have a bunch of comparison-time on my hands so I just did a word count:
Account #1: the Lord said thirty words to Paul.
Account #2: thirty-eight words.
Account #3: one-hundred and twenty-seven red-letter words.
So there’s some discrepancies.
Is that a problem? Is the author jerking us around, lying, misinformationing, contradicting himself, making it up? I guess you’d have to think on that.
Personally I figure it’s simpler, something like this:
My niece has a penguin stuffy: I tell her I went to the Calgary Zoo and saw penguins.
I meet a lion-tamer from a circus in Tanzania and try to build a bridge by saying: I went to the Calgary Zoo and saw lions.
My friend has a flamingo tattoo and I say: I went to the Calgary Zoo and saw fifty pink flamingos.
Am I deceiving anyone about what I saw at the zoo? Jerking anyone around?
No.
And I don’t guess Luke is either.
Note: the three accounts are in Acts 9:3-6, 22:6-11; 26:12-18 (NASB)