“Any belonging to the Way”
and requested letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem. (Acts 9:2 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An odd, capitalized 'Way' with no explanation.
The cultural key
The movement's earliest recorded name for itself: the Way (ha-derek), used throughout Acts (19:9, 23; 24:14, 22) before 'Christian' was coined at Antioch as an outsiders' label. The name breathes Isaiah 40:3, 'prepare the way of the LORD,' the very text the Baptist claimed, and Jesus' own 'I am the way.' Strikingly, the community at Qumran also called its life 'the Way,' drawn from the same Isaiah verse: two Jewish renewal movements reaching for the same self-description.
Recovered meaning
Not yet a religion with a noun, but a road you walk: a movement named for direction of life rather than system of belief. Saul is hunting people 'belonging to the Way' on a road, where the Way's Lord is about to stop him in person.