Events

6-9 July, 2026, "Remembering the Damascus Road: Paul, Acts, and Social Memory"

Dr. Ellen Howard will be presenting at the international meeting of SBL in Adelaide this year. Her paper will examine how Paul’s Damascus Road experience is remembered and narrated in Epistle to the Galatians and Acts of the Apostles. Rather than treating the differences between Paul’s account in Galatians 1 and Luke’s narration in Acts primarily as historical contradictions or questions of literary dependence, the study will approach them through the lens of social memory theory. It will argue that Paul’s account reflects a rhetorically shaped autobiographical memory aimed at defending his apostolic authority, while Acts preserves a communal recollection shaped by early Christian concerns about identity and leadership. Read in this way, the two narratives function not as competing versions of the same event but as differently situated memories of a formative moment in early Christianity.