A meteorite similar to the one that swept over Chelyabinsk could change the history of Christianity.
Believers know the story of the Apostle Paul, who persecuted Christians, but received his sight thanks to God. During the journey of Saul, such was the name of the apostle before his baptism, a light illuminated in Damascus, from which he became blind. At the moment of baptism, three days after the onset of blindness, Saul received his sight and became a zealous preacher of Christian doctrine.
American astronomer William Hartmann, founder of the Institute of Planetary Sciences in Tucson, Texas, believes that the basis of the Gospel story is a very real natural phenomenon. Saul could well have gone blind when he saw a meteorite like the one that flew over Chelyabinsk the year before last.
In such cases, ultraviolet radiation can cause temporary blindness, which doctors call photokeratitis. In Chelyabinsk, numerous cases of burns and temporary blindness were also recorded, writes the Daily Mail.
The Texas astronomer came to this conclusion after carefully studying three Bible accounts of Saul's conversion. They contain different descriptions of a bright flash of light that descended from heaven, somewhere in the thirties of the first century in the vicinity of Damascus. The description is very similar to the case of meteorites.
According to Hartmann, Saul could see what the residents of Chelyabinsk saw two millennia later when a meteorite swept and exploded over their heads in 2013. The roar from the explosion, according to the American astronomer, could well have seemed to Saul as a voice from heaven.
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The discovery of the remains of a meteorite in Syria could prove this theory.