Acts of the Apostles Trivia

Paul's given name, Saul, means "asked for" or "prayed for" (source), while the new name he gave himself after he saw the vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus means "small" or "humble" (source). What a difference a letter makes.

Acts of the Apostles is a book in the Bible, but it's also a genre. There's tons of early Christian stories recounting the adventures of the disciples of Jesus. The Acts of Peter. The Acts of Paul. The Acts of Peter and Paul. The Acts of Philip. The Acts of Paul and Thecla. (Who's Thecla? You'll just have to read it and find out.) That's only to name a few. Acts of the Apostles is the only one that made the biblical cut, but the others are still pretty darn entertaining.

You might have noticed that Acts of the Apostles has a lot of dialogue in it. About a fifth of the book is made up of speeches. Really long speeches. Some tell the same story over and over again. Like Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus—we get to hear that gem three times! (Source)

Between when he left Antioch to travel the Roman Empire and his arrest in Jerusalem, Paul logged about 2,700 miles of road during his journeys. That would be like walking back and forth from the east coast to the west coast of the United States three and a half times (yeah, we know Forest Gump ran that at least four times, but we're still impressed). Paul may have taken a ship now and then, but like Forest, lots of those miles were logged on foot. We bet Paul wore out his sandals pretty often.