Biography as autobiography …

… Reading in a Boom Time of Biographical Fiction | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I chose to write about Saint Paul because, first of all, I considered him the inventor of Christianity, a figure almost equal to Plato in his influence on western thought. But, in this case, one has only a handful of letters—perhaps six of the thirteen Pauline epistles in the New Testament are considered authentic by most scholars. The Acts of the Apostles provide a partial biography of Paul. But this is a sketch. It’s for the novelist to imagine the contours of Paul’s inner world, to guess at his motives. I saw him as a repressed homosexual, a man of amazing visionary powers, a godly person who heard voices—including the voice of God. 

How he sees Paul is just that. How exactly does how he sees Paul tell me anything about the actual Paul?