Voted HP because wacky zealot prophet who goes around speaking in tongues is not the kind of person I admire, much less like. That said, I find the personality in Paul's letters rather compelling in its forcefulness, earthy eloquence, ironic humour, single-mindedness. He's an individual, multi-sided, with his own voice, when every other figure in the Bible is an archetype of some sort.
And to call Paul an antisemite when almost his central theological concern was the election of Israel is kind of silly. The author of gJohn spitting about "you Jews" he is not, and it's unfair on him to say one lead to the other.
Yeah, the only real question that might sensibly be asked is whether the Road to Damascus actually happened as reported, or if it was something he devoutly wished had happened that way.
Probably not because Acts is pretty unreliable (for one it directly contradicts Paul's own letters in places). Something dramatic must have happened though, possibly related to his claim that he was taken up to the "third heaven" and visited Paradise.
Anyway I have hard time seeing Paul as a slick conman of gullible gentiles considering people complained he was not actually very impressive in person. He has far too much of "ordinary person thrust into greatness by sheer bloodyminded conviction of his own destiny" about him.
The fact that
that sort of controversial, zealous, self aggrandising perhaps even economical with the truth Christian who has been questioned from Tertullian to the present day is
himself a core tenet of the NT text is I think almost admirable. A 'trap' maybe?
He might not have been the first of his type and he's certainly not the last.
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