Picturing Saul’s Vision on the Road to Damascus: A Question of Authority
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Saul’s vision of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9) has been a popular theme for artists over the centuries because it expresses something meaningful to both the artists and their audiences. Meaning, however, changes over time. My aim in this article is to explore how and why the narrative of Acts asserts the authority of Saul’s vision and how audience perception of this authority evolved over time, as evident in artistic representations of Saul’s vision. By employing literary and rhetorical analysis, I will clarify the claim that the author of Acts employs this vision as a reliable message from God by exploring two related issues: (1) the centrality of the life of the community to the function of the vision; and (2) the establishment of credibility by means of the shared visionary experiences of unrelated corroborative witnesses. However, as many visual interpretations of Saul’s vision indicate, the conception of this vision encounter as divine guidance for a whole community did not continue to be a central part of its value for later Christians. On the contrary, Paul’s personal authority and/or transformation become(s) the significant outcome of the vision for later audiences. Therefore, this article will also engage in the study of reception history to show how perception of the authority granted to this vision changed over time and ultimately reframed the power of the vision by elevating the transformation of the individual over the transformation of the community.
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2
Susan Niditch, Ancient Israelite Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 35-45; Frances Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras (JSJSup, 90; Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 53-56; Susan Garrett, No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 30.
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5
John A. Darr, Herod the Fox: Audience Criticism and Lukan Characterization (JSNTSup, 163; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), pp. 20-21.
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15
Flannery-Daily, Dreamers, p.17- 22. Flannery-Dailey states that dreams in the ancient world were thought to be “actual meetings with a transcendent reality” (p. 17) and that a “message dream is a theophany” (p. 22). See also Johannes Lindblom, “Theophanies in Holy Places in Hebrew Religion,” HUCA 32 (1961), pp. 91-106 (93).
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32
Charles W. Hedrick, “Paul’s Conversion/Call: A Comparative Analysis of the Three Reports in Acts,” JBL 100.3 (1981), pp. 415-32 (425, 427-32); Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 322; Gerhard A. Krodel, Acts (Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), pp. 172-73; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (AB, 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998), pp. 426, 706.
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35
Witherup, “Functional Redundancy in the Acts of the Apostles,” p. 78; Walsh, “‘Realizing’ Paul’s Visions,” pp. 31-33. Robert L. Brawley, concludes that Paul’s characterization in Acts is intentionally ambiguous, the discrepancies between the three vision accounts both subordinate and do not subordinate Paul to the apostles (Centering on God: Method and Message in Luke-Acts, [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990] pp. 155, 158).
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42
A.H.M. Kessels, Studies on the Dream in Greek Literature (Utrecht: HES, 1978), pp. 203-205.
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46
Corley, “Interpreting Paul’s Conversion,” pp. 7-8. Walter Friedlaender notes that horses are not present in the oldest depictions of the scene, specifically in Byzantine manuscripts of the ninth and mosaics of the twelfth century (Caravaggio Studies [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955], p. 3).
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49
John Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London: Phaidon, 1972), p. 44, cited in Hornik and Parson, Illuminating Luke, vol. 3. p. 66.
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51
William E. Wallace, “Narrative and Religious Expression in Michelangelo’s Pauline Chapel,” Artibus et Historiae 10.19 (1989), pp. 107-121 (107).
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53
Wallace, “Narrative and Religious Expression in Michelangelo’s Pauline Chapel,” p. 119.
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54
Wallace, “Narrative and Religious Expression in Michelangelo’s Pauline Chapel,” p. 119.
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56
Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), p. 184.
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57
Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (New York: Penguins, 2011), p. 214.
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64
Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 126.
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66
Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, p. 217. See also Friedlaender’s conclusion that this unusual combination of biblical scenes imitates Michelangelo’s frescos in the Pauline Chapel (Caravaggio Studies, p. 7).
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67
Grietje Sloan, “The Transformation of Religious Conversion from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Petrarch and Caravaggio,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 15.1 (1988), pp. 131-49 (143, 146), emphasis mine. Sloan sees a connection between the Cerasi Conversion and Protestant religious traits that were developing at this time.
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74
Kee, “The Conversion of Paul,” p. 55; Walsh, “‘Realizing’ Paul’s Visions,” p. 30.
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Picturing Saul’s Vision on the Road to Damascus: A Question of Authority
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Deborah Thompson Prince in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Saul’s vision of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9) has been a popular theme for artists over the centuries because it expresses something meaningful to both the artists and their audiences. Meaning, however, changes over time. My aim in this article is to explore how and why the narrative of Acts asserts the authority of Saul’s vision and how audience perception of this authority evolved over time, as evident in artistic representations of Saul’s vision. By employing literary and rhetorical analysis, I will clarify the claim that the author of Acts employs this vision as a reliable message from God by exploring two related issues: (1) the centrality of the life of the community to the function of the vision; and (2) the establishment of credibility by means of the shared visionary experiences of unrelated corroborative witnesses. However, as many visual interpretations of Saul’s vision indicate, the conception of this vision encounter as divine guidance for a whole community did not continue to be a central part of its value for later Christians. On the contrary, Paul’s personal authority and/or transformation become(s) the significant outcome of the vision for later audiences. Therefore, this article will also engage in the study of reception history to show how perception of the authority granted to this vision changed over time and ultimately reframed the power of the vision by elevating the transformation of the individual over the transformation of the community.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1358 | 143 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 653 | 35 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 319 | 36 | 1 |