Reported here:
In 2016, approximately 76 percent of adults in the U.S. stated they wore some form of vision correction.
Widespread use of eyeglasses is an outgrowth of their late invention, during the Italian Renaissance, with ubiquitous production with plastic lenses dating only from the 1980s. Before that, things looked, well, kind of grim for an overwhelming majority of people.
St. Paul, who probably had very bad eyes from birth, yet boasted that he had seen the Lord.
Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?
-- 1 Corinthians 9:1
Paul's conversion, however, bespeaks a probably lifelong preoccupation with his poor eyesight. It specifically involves being blinded, and then scales falling from his eyes when he recovers his sight well enough to be considered normal again, and this again miraculously (Acts 9:8f., 18, 27).
But evidently this was not a full restoration of his sight.
According to Acts 23:1ff. Paul still could not spot the high priest in a crowd of people he was addressing. He says the Galatians would have given him their own eyes if they could have (Galatians 4:15), admitting that he is infirm (Galatians 4:13), and that he must write to them using "large letters" (Galatians 6:11). The Galatians knew the man and the truth about the man.
By the time he is dictating Romans, he is now older and his eyes have grown so bad that he requires an assistant to write the epistle. This person even makes an appearance at the end of it in order to explain why the penmanship doesn't match Paul's (I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord. -- Romans 16:22).
We are to believe Paul was granted a miracle of an appearance of Jesus, but not a complete healing.
Like so much else outside the miracles recounted in the Synoptic tradition performed by the historical Jesus, one cannot help but feel let down by these details involving the achievements of the risen Saviour.
And a post-conversion St. Paul who could not see well enough to recognize the high priest may reasonably be doubted to have been able to recognize Jesus pre-conversion, risen or otherwise.
Isn't that obvious from Paul's own testimony?
Who art thou, Lord? -- Acts 9:5
Who art thou, Lord? -- Acts 22:8
Who art thou, Lord? -- Acts 26:15
