AD 34

Road to Damascus

Saul's Damascus revelation and his first preaching in the city

The man traveling toward Damascus with authorization to make arrests entered the city blind, led by the hand — and within days was preaching in its synagogues.

An arrest mission interrupted outside Damascus

This timeline lists the event at approximately AD 34, one published reconstruction among several. In the account in Acts, Saul of Tarsus was traveling toward Damascus carrying letters from the high priest that authorized him to seize members of "the Way" when a light from heaven surrounded him and he fell to the ground.

A voice asked why he was being persecuted, identified itself as Jesus, and told him to go into the city and wait for instructions. He got up unable to see, and had to be led by the hand the rest of the way.

Acts says he then spent three days in Damascus without sight and without food or drink.

Why the year is written 34 and cannot be pinned

No ancient source dates the encounter. The Cambridge Companion to St Paul uses AD 32–33 illustratively; another published reconstruction puts it at AD 34.

The surviving sources do not resolve the choice between these reconstructions.

Paul's own letters supply no year at all. Galatians measures intervals instead: he did not go up to Jerusalem until three years after the revelation, and then stayed fifteen days with Cephas.

What Paul reports, and what Acts adds

Paul's own version is compact — God revealed his Son to him so that he might proclaim him among gentiles — and he says he went first to Arabia and returned to Damascus. He mentions no road, no light, no blindness, no Ananias and no baptism.

Those details come from Acts, which retells the experience three times with variations in what Saul's companions heard or saw. In it a Damascus disciple named Ananias, who first objected that Saul was dangerous, laid hands on him; his sight returned, he was baptized, and he ate.

Acts then has him lodging with the disciples he had come to arrest and arguing in the city's synagogues that Jesus was the Messiah. He did not take the name Paul here: Acts introduces "Saul, also known as Paul" only much later, at 13:9.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 8 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0034.

What the sources leave uncertain

No source provides an exact year. Published chronologies commonly place the experience within a few years of Jesus’s death: the Cambridge Companion gives AD 32–33 illustratively, while other reconstructions use AD 34 or later.
Paul’s letters are the earlier and firsthand source, but they give only a compact theological account. The road, light, blindness, Ananias, baptism, and arrest mission come from Acts.
Acts retells the experience three times, with variations in what Paul’s companions heard or saw and in the commissioning speech.
“Conversion” is conventional terminology, but Paul describes the event as revelation and calling; many scholars stress that he continued to identify as Jewish.