Paul's natural impulse on returning from Damascus to Jerusalem was to seek out the disciples, and we are told in Acts (9:26) that "he assayed to join himself" to them, no doubt expecting a cordial reception as one who had preached the gospel with success in Damascus. If so, he must have been bitterly disappointed. It was not that they did not know him; they remembered him all too vividly in his former role as a persecutor. He who, because of his profession as a Christian, had barely escaped from the Jews in Damascus with his life, now found among the Christians at Jerusalem mistrust and suspicion where he would naturally expect support. "They were all afraid of him," we read, "and believed not that he was a disciple." Paul was thus placed in an awkward predicament: for the time being he was accepted neither by Jews nor Christians in Jerusalem.
Fortunately Paul found a sponsor in the person of a disciple named Joses, whom others affectionately called Barnabas (literally "son of consolation," of "encouragement," or "exhortation"), who, in accord with the practice in the Christian community, had sold some property and brought the proceeds to the apostles (see 4:32-37). He was a Levite from Cyprus, not far from Paul's homeland of Cilicia. Barnabas rescued Paul from his embarrassing situation and introduced him favorably to other disciples (see 9:27).
Paul gives his own account of his first visit to Jerusalem as part of his "Galatians autobiography" (see 1:18, 19). Here the apostle is concerned to tell his readers not of the visit in general but of his reception by Simon Peter. Scholars debate whether the Galatians account indicates a private visit to Jerusalem, during which time Paul did no preaching but only visited Peter and James. But if we are right in closely combining the two accounts, we may see the kindly and impulsive Simon Peter, a leader of the church, as one of the first to make amends to Paul for the members' original suspicion of him. Peter took Paul into his own home for fifteen days, as Paul himself tells us, and thus Paul's desire to see Peter was fulfilled, doubtless far beyond his expectations. We would give much to know what transpired in that momentous first meeting between one so close to the Master throughout his ministry and the one destined to become his new interpreter to the world that lay to the west.
