The Enigmatic Apostle Paul— Does Anyone Ever Get Him Right?

by Jerry B. Jenkins

I’ve breathed the rarefied air of the novelist whose series (in my case Left Behind)becomes a surprise hit, sells tens of millions of copies, and reaches the big screen. My fictitious hero was immortalized by Nicolas Cage.

It was the literary equivalent of hitting the lottery, so had I hated my existence, I would have abandoned the drudgery and escaped to some Shangri la with my lifetime bride and passed the rest of my days on a beach somewhere, sans shoes.

But writers write. It’s why we live. I like to say I don’t sing or dance or preach—this is all I do. Plus, Dianna has loved me for decades but in small doses, like at meals and every-night sleepovers, and I suspect she worries I’d be underfoot if I actually gave up this gig.

So I remain at the keyboard making up stories.

What’s different these days is the competition. When Left Behind launched, I was hoping to scare people out of hell. Stephen King was scaring the hell out of people. (He still is, and profitably so.) John Grisham was spellbinding us in the courtroom (that hasn’t changed either). Anne Rice weaved vampire tales (those haven’t changed, but she has).

But now the old guard faces The Hunger Games’s Katniss Everdeen, The Divergent Series’s Beatrice Prior, Twilight’s Bella, Harry Potter’s boy wizard, and even 50 Shades of You-Know-Who-Doing-Who-Knows-What.

So what do I do? For the last three years I’ve spent my alone time with a 2,000-year-old man who once actually existed. I’ve gone and chosen the oxymoronic genre called biblical fiction, and my lead-character-hero-protagonist-point-of-view guy is none other than the Apostle Paul of Tarsus.

Not only might Paul seem far afield from the characters above who have so captivated 21^st Century imaginations, but some might wonder if I’ve regressed to moralistic Sunday school fare.

Anything but.

There’s a reason Paul’s writing (nearly half of the New Testament) has lasted two millennia. It’s brilliant, persuasive, passionate, and full of insight. I’m neither theologian nor scholar, so I have to painstakingly study every line and consult commentaries and consultants to be sure I understand every nuance.

And while I’m writing fiction, I am determined not to contradict Scripture. Still, I’m finding so much latitude and so many dramatic scenarios merely suggested in the Bible that with I, Saul (2013) and Empire’s End (released in June), I feel I have had access to a sea of story possibilities.

Even people of faith, who think they know Paul, tend to get him wrong. Though he referred to himself, pre-Damascus Road conversion, as the chiefest of sinners and dead in trespasses and sins, I’m convinced that even then he was devout in his loyalty to the one true God.

Paul sincerely believed the followers of Jesus were blasphemers, a threat to the Temple. The followers of The Way, the Nazarenes, were to be rooted out, arrested, imprisoned, and yes, even killed if necessary to stamp out the menace.

I believe Paul, who had been born a Pharisee and memorized the Scriptures from the time he was old enough to read, longed for the personal relationship with God that his biblical heroes enjoyed—Abraham and Noah and Samuel and David. And short of that, he committed himself to becoming the most devout scholar and follower of the law that he could be.

Many Christian believers say they’ve had a Damascus Road-like conversion, realizing they were sinners, coming to the end of themselves, and repenting of their pasts. But that was not what happened to Paul.

He was headed to Damascus to persecute more believers when Jesus intercepted him on the road, blinded him, told him who He was, and made him a missionary and evangelist to Jew and Gentile alike. Only then did Paul spend three days weeping in deep remorse over his past.

My fiction fleshes out stories only hinted at in the Scripture, such as where it says that Paul’s sister’s son overhears a plot to kill him and then helps thwart it. That’s two or three verses, but to the novelist it’s two or three chapters.

Why would a member of Paul’s family care, after Paul has humiliated the family by becoming a Christ follower? And where would his nephew have heard this? I give Paul’s sister and her son names and histories with Paul to suggest how this all could have played out.

My overall fictional construct is that Paul’s personal journal has been found, so we get a glimpse behind the scenes and into his private thoughts and emotions surrounding what we read about in the New Testament.

I find it providential that AD The Bible Continues is airing on television at the same time Empire’s End has been released. I’m fascinated at the choices the writer, the producers, and the director have made, especially with Paul.

I could quibble over details, like his holding only one coat of the attackers when members of the Temple council stone Stephen. And there is no biblical record of Paul and Peter’s first encounter, though I found it inventive and helpful to their rendering of the story. (In Empire’s End I have Paul fall in love with a woman he doesn’t realize is the widow of one of his former victims, so I know the value of dramatic license.)

I felt it was a stretch to have Paul actually see Jesus Himself on the road, when Scripture is clear he saw only a great light. And like so many retellings of Paul’s ministry life, his exile to the wilderness first—for three years—is passed over. While that might be difficult to make compelling on television, it’s a crucial part of the man’s life, and in Empire’s End I fill it with betrayal, romance, and bloodshed.

The Bible is also clear that when Paul first returned to Jerusalem, he spoke only to Peter and James among the disciples of Jesus.

But those are minor issues in the big picture. It warms me that the same real person I chose to feature in my current novel is also, in essence, the star of his own miniseries, nearly two thousand years after his death.

Paul may have been the most intense man who ever lived. He said and believed that “to live is Christ and to die is gain,” and he proved he meant it every day. He was fearless. Shipwrecked thrice, snake bit, stoned and left for dead, flogged, imprisoned numerous times, and finally decapitated by Nero, Paul is the most convicting person I have ever written about.

Jerry B. Jenkins’ books have sold more than 70 million copies, including the phenomenal mega-best-selling Left Behind series. Twenty-one of his books have reached the New York Times best-seller list, including seven that debuted at number one, and also the USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists. Jerry and his wife, Dianna, live in Colorado.