AS they neared Damascus, an intense light suddenly blazed before them, throwing Saul and his officers to their knees. Then Saul heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.”* Other things happened that he would not speak of afterwards;* but when the light faded Saul was completely blind. He asked his companions to lead him by the hand to a house in Straight Street, to wait for someone named Ananias.
Ananias duly came, prompted by a vision, but remained distrustful until the former Pharisee, his sight now miraculously restored, was properly baptised. Saul’s outraged superiors, however, rushed out warrants for his arrest, and he barely escaped Damascus alive, lowered over the city walls in a basket. The Christians of Syria and Judaea took more convincing, but Barnabas believed in him, and with his encouragement Saul began winning the doubters over, declaring the gospel and debating the Scriptures in synagogues from Jerusalem to his hometown of Tarsus.
The site is traditionally associated with Tal Kokab (Koukab) about ten miles southwest of central Damascus in Syria. The Monastery of the Vision of St Paul established there by the Antiochian (Greek) Orthodox Church is believed to stand on the site of churches going back at least to the second century. See ‘Syria: On the road to Damascus’ (Telegraph). For an insight into Syrian society and its attitude to Christianity see also ‘Fragments from Syria’ (OrthoChristian).
It appears from the two accounts, in Acts 9:3-8 and Acts 22:6-11, that Saul’s companions saw the light (though they were not left blinded by it) and heard the sound of speaking, but not what was said, nor did they see the speaker.
“I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago” he later told the Christians of Corinth in Greece, speaking of himself “caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” See 2 Corinthians 12:2-4.