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So with your new book, The Gospel According to Paul, you're attempting to read Paul as though you are the recipient of this letter from an actual man.

All we have of Paul are these letters, and so we forget that what the converts who got the message had was a memory of this extraordinary, dynamic figure that claimed he effectively "re–presented" in his own person the death of Christ. The letters were a substitute for himself, because what his readers and converts really needed was him. He embodied the message. It was only when he couldn't be there that he had to write a letter. We've forgotten this because it's been nearly 2,000 years since Paul trod this earth, and we have lost all sight of him as a person, as a presence.

Can you give me just a brief sketch of the man those churches would have known and loved?

The most powerful thing you could conceive on earth at the time was the Roman Emperor. Paul comes to the synagogues and insists that Jesus outranks the Emperor. This is a pretty subversive message. People wonder whether he's crazy, hoodwinking them, or telling them the truth. He is certainly brave—clearly indomitable, and he will undergo anything for the sake of the gospel.

He becomes something of a father figure, and like a father, he sometimes finds his adolescent children vexing. Paul was not always successful at maintaining friendly relations with people, but he preached fervently. When he left a church, and his charisma was gone, there was a danger that everyone would slip back into the way they used to be. Then within six months they'd have a furious letter from Paul. If the phrase "I've got eyes in the back of my head" had existed, he'd have used it.

In most evangelical churches, it's normal that people have a moment of conversion that symbolizes the beginning of their relationship with Christ. Would you characterize Paul's experience—his Damascus Road encounter—in this way?

The momentary conversion, this sense that you had your moment, is often more like a feeling that something is coming. In a romantic relationship, you wonder if you're going to ask the person you love to marry you—you feel it building up, then eventually "Ta Da!" You get on your knees and you ask, but you could sort of see it coming. So many people who have instant conversions have in fact been agonizing about it for months. People grow into love of a community and start to feel connected to it before their conversion. So when the moment comes, it's often the climax of something that's already been brewing.

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