After God had revealed His son in him, Paul says, he went away into Arabia. Apparently this journey to Arabia is to be put very soon after the revelation, though the construction of the word "immediately" in Gal. i. 16 is not perfectly clear. If that word goes merely with the negative part of the sentence, then nothing is said about the time of the journey to Arabia; Paul would say merely that in the period just after the revelation of God's Son he did not go up to Jerusalem. There would then be no difficulty in the assertion of Acts which seems to put a stay in Damascus with preaching activity in the synagogues immediately after the baptism. This interpretation is adopted by a number of modern commentators, not only by B. Weiss and Zahn, who might be suspected of a bias in favor of the Book of Acts, but also by Sieffert and Lipsius and Bousset. Perhaps more naturally, however, the word "immediately" in Galatians is to be taken grammatically with the positive part of the sentence or with the whole sentence; the sentence would then mean, "Immediately, instead of conferring with flesh and blood or going up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, I went away into Arabia and again I returned to Damascus." Even so, however, there is no real contradiction with Acts. When Paul tells what happened "immediately" after the revelation he is thinking in terms not of days but of journeys. The very first journey after the conversion--and it took place soon--was not to Jerusalem but to Arabia. When taken in the context the sentence does not exclude a brief preaching activity in Damascus before the journey to Arabia. Grammatically the word "immediately" may go with the positive part of the sentence, but in essential import it goes rather with the negative part. What Paul is really concerned about is to deny that he went up to Jerusalem soon after his conversion.