But in some respects, Luke’s view of the Damascus experience was very different from Paul’s. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke calls it a “vision” (orama), an “ecstasy” (ekstasis), or an “apparition” (optasia), but when he described the encounters of Jesus’s disciples with the risen Christ in his gospel, he did not use any of these words. These earlier sightings, Luke believed, had been objective, physical events. Jesus had walked, talked, and eaten with them just as he did before the crucifixion. Paul’s “vision” experience bore no resemblance to this.
