The life of the apostle Paul presents another interesting difference between the accounts found in the New Testament. When we compare Paul’s own words in Galatians with the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, we find differences in the details of his travels after his conversion.
In Galatians 1:17–2:9, Paul explains that he did not travel to Jerusalem immediately after becoming a follower of Jesus. Instead, he went to Arabia and later returned to Damascus. According to his account, he visited Jerusalem only after three years. During this visit, he stayed for fifteen days and met Cephas (Peter) and James, the Lord’s brother. Paul stresses that he did not meet the other apostles at that time.
After leaving Jerusalem, Paul travelled to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. He then describes another visit to Jerusalem fourteen years later, when he met the leaders of the early Christian community. This visit is sometimes connected with the meeting described in Acts 15, commonly known as the Jerusalem Council, although the exact relationship between the two accounts is debated.
The account in Acts 9 presents Paul’s journey differently. After his conversion, Paul remained in Damascus for some time, preaching about Jesus. When a plot against his life was discovered, he escaped from the city. He then travelled to Jerusalem, where Barnabas helped introduce him to the apostles.
Unlike Paul’s account in Galatians, Acts does not mention his journey to Arabia. It also does not specify that three years passed before his first visit to Jerusalem. Instead, it says that Paul stayed with the believers there and preached boldly. Later, when another threat arose against him, the believers took him to Caesarea and sent him to Tarsus.
Some time afterward, Barnabas travelled to Tarsus to find Paul and brought him to Antioch. There, they worked together in the growing Christian community, and Paul’s wider missionary activities began to develop.
These differences raise questions about the order of events, the length of time involved, and the people Paul met during his early years as a Christian. Galatians provides Paul’s personal account, while Acts presents a broader narrative of the early Church. The two accounts do not include the same details, making it difficult to create a single, precise timeline from the information provided.
Biblical scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer highlights this point in his commentary on Acts. He observes that the author of Acts does not mention Paul’s journey to Arabia or his return to Damascus, nor does the phrase “a considerable time” in Acts 9:23 specify the three-year period mentioned in Galatians 1:18.
The central question, therefore, is why these accounts describe Paul’s early travels differently. Are they offering different levels of detail about the same events, or do they reflect different ways of presenting Paul’s life? Readers and scholars continue to examine these passages to understand their relationship and the historical timeline they describe.
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