Did Paul and Jesus ever meet?
We know that Jesus made a practice of attending the great religious feats at Jerusalem, and Saul, as a Pharisee who had been a student there, would surely do so, even if this involved his journeying from Tarsus for the purpose; so it is conceivable that both might have been in the city at the same time on a number of occasions. Yet even after the Master had begun to preach, it would have been natural for a zealous Pharisee to take no interest in one who, to him, would have appeared simply an obscure Galilean carpenter, claiming, as others had and would, to be the Messiah of prophecy (see Matt. 24:5, 24).
Turning to his epistles, we find that Paul appealed to the fact that he had "seen" Christ Jesus (I Cor. 9:1), but it is evident that when he did so, he was recalling the famous incident on the Damascus road long after the ascension. Even when he said, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (II Cor. 5:16), it was no proof that he himself had known Jesus personally before his crucifixion, for it seems clear from the context that the phrase "we have known Christ after the flesh" is not meant to be taken in a strictly literal sense. There were men at Corinth, and doubtless in other places, who questioned Paul's apostleship, and if he had been one of those who had known Jesus during his ministry, he could hardly have failed to mention such an important point in his defense. However, Paul made no claim to have observed the Messiah's mighty works or to have heard from Jesus' own lips the message of salvation. Paul was indeed sure of the authenticity of his gospel, but it came to him through no such channels as these. "The gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:11, 12).
