nPeace
Veteran Member
Paul is not the writer of Luke.I think you just grasped an important lesson in life. You are not X because you claim you are. Isaac Newton was a scientist (of sort, at the time sciences were still in their infancy) because he produced scientific work, was part of a scientific society and was recognized as such by his peers and the population in general. You are not X simply because you claim you are it. It's a bit more complicated than that. You reasonably cannot claim to be the king of Assyria for instance. Even if Assyria still existed as a polity; you would not be its king, you would be just an insane man.
For Paul, that's a bit more complicated than Peter. Peter can easily claimed to be an Apostle for he was one of the pupil and followers of Jesus. Paul never met Jesus and never followed him during his lifetime. Paul claim to have had a vision of Jesus' ghost while on the road to Damascus during some sort of epileptic seizure. We all know he could very well lie; that's a very big possibility and, unlike Peter, he doesn't have the means to prove it by showing his knowledge of Jesus' personal life, or the backing of other apostles or people who simply witnessed him with Jesus and are still around. Plus, knowing a person made of flesh and blood vs meeting someone else's ghost in a mystic vision are two very different type of experiences. In the end, I don't think there is much reason to believe Paul was indeed an Apostle of Jesus since, by his own admission and that of other followers of Jesus, he never met him. You have to have great faith and a certain blind trust in that man to believe what he said. Was he am early Christian, an preacher and one of the founder of Christian theology? Absolutely no doubt about that. Was he an apostle? I would say probably not.
It was Luke who said that Paul "met" Jesus, and received a commission from him.
In fact, Luke is the one who provided the information on how the apostles were skeptical about Paul's conversion.
He is the same historian that informed us of Peter's - an apostle - activity, after Jesus' ascension,, as well as the formation, and progress of the Christian congregation.