18. Rome at last!
Rome, the largest and most splendid of ancient cities, acted like a magnet to its peoples. For Rome was the capital and symbol of the Roman Empire, whose founding has been called ‘the grandest political achievement ever accomplished’. Rome presided majestically over the whole known world. It treated its conquered subjects and their religions with comparatively humane tolerance; it somehow managed to integrate Romans, Greeks, Jews and ‘Barbarians’ into its social life; it protected the Greek culture and language; it promoted respect for the rule of law; it gained a reputation for efficient administration and postal communication; and it enabled travel by its ambitious system of roads and ports, policed by its legions and its navy, so preserving for the benefit of all the long-standing and widespread peace known as pax romana. No wonder people came from far and wide to see the great city from which these blessings originated! Its buildings were famous: the three circuses and their daring chariot races, the palaces of the Caesars, the tombs of the illustrious dead, the temples (especially the Pantheon erected by Augustus), the basilicas, theatres, baths and aqueducts, and particularly the bustling forum, the hub of the city’s commercial, social, political and religious life.
So Paul longed to visit Rome. True, Seneca had called it ‘a cesspool of iniquity’ and Juvenal ‘a filthy sewer’, and Paul had himself described this moral decadence near the beginning of his letter to the Romans, but all the more urgently did it need the gospel. True, John in the book of Revelation portrayed Rome as a persecuting monster and as ‘the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth’, but he was writing at least twenty years later in Domitian’s reign; Nero at the time of Paul’s visit had not yet exposed his ugly cruelty. True again, Paul was ‘a Hebrew of the Hebrews’, who went from Tarsus to Jerusalem to study, but, having inherited Roman citizenship from his father, he must have dreamed since childhood of visiting the city for himself.
We do not know how, or how early, the gospel reached Rome and a church was planted there. Luke has told us that the Jerusalem crowd on the Day of Pentecost included some ‘visitors from Rome’ (2:10). Perhaps some of them were converted at that time and then took the gospel home with them. At all events, twenty-five years later Paul was able to address his great manifesto of the gospel to the church in Rome, and when eventually he approached the city, some church members came out to meet him (28:15). If only Rome could be thoroughly evangelized, he must often have thought to himself, and its church enlarged, consolidated and fired with a missionary vision, what a radiating centre for the gospel it could become! ‘To a Roman the city of Rome was the centre of the world; from the golden milestone in the Forum at Rome roads went out in all directions to all parts of the Empire.’
So in the letter to the Romans Paul expressed his anxiety to visit the city and its church. Near the beginning of his letter he told them that he was praying that now at last the way would open for him to visit them, for he longed to see them in order that he might strengthen them and that he and they might be mutually encouraged. Indeed, he had planned many times to visit them in order to reap a harvest among them, but had thus far been prevented. So now he was eager to preach the gospel to them in Rome. Then towards the end of his letter he reverted to the same theme. His ambition was to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, in order not to build on somebody else’s foundation. That was why he had been hindered from coming to them. But now that Greece had been evangelized, there was no more room for him in those regions. And since he had been longing for many years to see them, he was hoping and planning to visit them on his way to Spain. First, he had to go to Jerusalem to deliver the collection he had been organizing. But once that task was accomplished, he was confident that he would come to them with Christ’s full blessing. So he urged them to join him in his struggle by praying for him both that his service to God’s people in Jerusalem might be accepted and that afterwards by God’s will he might reach them with joy. What Paul wrote to the Romans was extremely personal: ‘I pray . . . I long . . . I am eager . . . I plan . . . I hope . . . I urge . . .’ And it was all self-consistent. His hoping, longing and eagerness became a plan and then a prayer, in which he asked them to join him. The thought of this visit meant so much to him that he must have it shared with Luke and other friends. Rome dominated his horizon.
In fact, Luke appears deliberately to arrange his material in both his Gospel and Acts in order to highlight what Floyd V. Filson has called ‘the journey motif’. Two-fifths of the Gospel describe Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and the final third of Acts describes Paul’s journey from Jerusalem to Rome (19:21 – 28:31). In this way Luke indicates that Jerusalem and its temple are not essential to the church. ‘It would capture the essential geographical outlook of Luke to entitle the Gospel of Luke “From Galilee to Jerusalem” and the Book of Acts “From Jerusalem to Rome”’, for Jerusalem was the goal of Jesus’ ministry, while Rome was the goal of Paul’s. Although the journeys of Jesus and Paul differed from one another in their ultimate direction and destination, they also resembled one another in their pattern, for both included a resolute determination, an arrest, a series of trials in Jewish and Roman courts, and even death and resurrection. For Paul’s descent into the darkness and danger of the storm was a kind of grave, while his rescue from shipwreck and later springtime voyage to Rome were a kind of resurrection. Luke’s ‘highest apology for Paul’ was to portray him as ‘so conformed to the life of the Lord that even his sufferings and deliverance are parallel’.
1. From Caesarea to Crete (27:1–12)
Many readers of Acts 27 have commented on the precision, accuracy and vividness of the narrative. The explanation is surely not that Luke borrowed from somebody else’s first-hand description of a sea voyage and shipwreck (as some liberal scholars have unjustifiably suggested), but rather that he was himself present throughout Paul’s journey from Jerusalem to Rome, as indicated by the fourth and final ‘we-section’ which runs from 27:1 to 28:16, and that he was writing a daily log of the ship’s progress, on which he drew later. ‘There is no such detailed record of the working of an ancient ship’, wrote Thomas Walker, ‘in the whole of classical literature.’
The writer who has done most to vindicate Luke’s accuracy in Acts 27 is James Smith of Jordanhill in Renfrewshire, Scotland, whose book The Voyage and Shipwreck of St Paul was published in 1848. He was a soldier by profession, a keen yachtsman of thirty years’ experience, an eminent amateur geologist and geographer, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He lived successively in Gibraltar, Lisbon and Malta, and spent the winter of 1844–5 in Malta while investigating Paul’s voyage. He was widely read, he familiarized himself with the weather patterns of the Mediterranean, and he made a study of navigation and seamanship in both the ancient and the modern worlds. His general conclusion was that Acts 27 was the work of an eyewitness who nevertheless was a landlubber and not a professional seaman: ‘no sailor would have written in a style so little like that of a sailor; no man not a sailor could have written a narrative of a sea voyage so consistent in all its parts, unless from actual observation’.
It is presumed (though not specifically stated) that they set sail from Caesarea, since it was there that Paul had been held in custody for two years and had been tried by Felix, Festus and Agrippa. Who were the other prisoners who were also on board? Ramsay suggests that they were ‘in all probability already condemned to death, and were going to supply the perpetual demand which Rome made on the provinces for human victims to amuse the populace by their death in the arena’.
No ship seems to have been available to transport the prisoners direct to Italy. In consequence, the voyage from Caesarea to Malta took place in two stages and in two ships, which came respectively from Adramyttium (2) and Alexandria (6).
a. A ship from Adramyttium (27:2–5)
Adramyttium was situated on the north-east shore of the Aegean Sea, not far south of Troas. This ship will have been a coastal vessel on its way back to its home port. But how is it that Luke and Aristarchus (who had travelled with Paul to Jerusalem, 20:4) were permitted to accompany Paul? Ramsay makes the plausible suggestion that ‘they must have gone as his slaves’. This may have enhanced Paul’s importance in the centurion’s eyes and may partly account for the respect in which he was held. On the other hand, Paul was later to refer to Aristarchus as ‘my fellow prisoner’.
Their first port of call was Sidon. It will have been a trading stop for the vessel, but for Paul a valuable opportunity for a few hours’ fellowship with Christian friends (3). Since the prevailing winds must have been westerly, to pass to the lee of Cyprus meant to sail to the north of it (4). This also explains how they sailed across open sea and off the coasts of Cilicia (where Paul’s home town of Tarsus was situated) and Pamphylia (where he had landed on the first missionary journey), and arrived at Myra (5), which is where they changed ships. According to the Western text, the journey so far had taken a fortnight.
b. A ship from Alexandria (27:6–12)
It was now that Julius the centurion (who, as Luke’s tale unfolds, wins our admiration for his kindness and common sense) found what he had been looking for earlier, namely a ship sailing for Italy. It was carrying a cargo of grain (see verse 38) and came from Alexandria, Egypt being Rome’s main granary. Sailing between the mainland and the island of Rhodes, but very slowly because of a contrary wind, they arrived off Cnidus, which is located at the south-west tip of Asia Minor. But there, instead of continuing west across the lower end of the Aegean Sea, they were forced by the wind almost due south towards Crete, and indeed a north-westerly wind ‘is precisely the wind which might have been expected in those seas towards the end of summer’. Rounding Cape Salmone, they hugged Crete’s south coast until they reached Fair Havens. It was clear to everybody that they could not go on to complete their voyage to Italy; they would have to winter somewhere. The only question was whether they should lay up in Fair Havens or seek a better harbour further west. The adverse weather conditions had led to a serious delay. The Day of Atonement was already past, which according to Ramsay fell on 5 October in ad 59. So they had entered the dangerous season for sailing, which always had to cease by the beginning of November. Paul, who had had a lot of experience of the Mediterranean Sea, warned them that to sail any further would bring loss to cargo, ship and life (10). But the pilot and the ship-owner thought differently, and the centurion agreed with them (11) on the grounds that Fair Havens was not a sufficiently protected harbour to winter in. So they decided to sail on a further 40 miles to Phoenix, although there is some dispute whether this is to be identified with Lutro (which is open to the east) or Phineka (which faces west). The natural translation of the end of verse 12 is facing both south-west and north-west, which favours Phineka, although Smith argued for Lutro by translating ‘in the same direction as’ the south-west and north-west winds – in other words, east!
2. Storm at sea (27:13–20)
The gentle southerly breeze which arose deceived them into thinking that they could manage another 40 miles (13). But a wind of hurricane force [typhōnikos, ‘typhonic’], called the ‘North-Easter’ [originally ‘Eurakylōn, a hybrid compound of Euros, the east wind, and Latin Aquilo, the north wind’], swept down from the Cretan mountains (14), forcing the ship to ‘scud before it’ (15).
The vessel was already in great danger, for once blown out of the lee of Crete there were no more harbours, only the open sea. It is fascinating to read the five precautionary measures which the crew now took in their desperate attempt to save their ship. First, briefly exploiting what little shelter Cauda (or Clauda) Island could offer them, they just managed to haul their lifeboat or dinghy on board (16). Actually, Luke writes that ‘we’ did it, because he lent a hand himself, though only with great difficulty, he adds, ‘probably remembering his blisters!’ Second, they ‘frapped’ the vessel, either by passing cables under its hull to hold its timbers together, or by lashing its stern and bow together above deck to prevent it from having its back broken (17a). Third, fearing the Syrtis sandbanks, which, although many miles south off the Libyan coast, were dreaded by all Mediterranean sailors, they lowered either ‘the mainsail’ (neb) or more probably the sea anchor to act as a brake as they drifted onwards (17b). Fourth, on the following day, as the relentless battering of the storm continued, they jettisoned some of the cargo (18). Fifth, on the third day of the tempest, they threw overboard as many parts of the ship’s tackle or equipment as could be spared (19). Then finally, after many days (eleven more, to be precise) of raging storm, with neither sun nor stars to guide them, and of course in those days no compass or sextant either, the whole ship’s company seems to have given up all hope of being saved. But it was in that crisis of despair that Paul stepped forward with a word of encouragement.
3. Paul’s three interventions (27:21–38)
So far in Acts Luke has depicted Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, the pioneer of the three missionary expeditions, the prisoner and the defendant. Now, however, he portrays him in a different light. He is no longer an honoured apostle, but an ordinary person among ordinary people, a lonely Christian (apart from Luke himself and Aristarchus) among nearly three hundred non-Christians, who were either soldiers or prisoners or perhaps merchants or crew. Yet Paul’s God-given leadership gifts clearly emerge. ‘It is quite certain’, writes William Barclay, ‘that Paul was the most experienced traveller on board that ship.’ Even Haenchen, who scornfully dismisses Luke’s portrait of him as ‘only . . . a mighty superman’, concedes that Luke fails to draw our attention adequately to Paul’s expertise as a seasoned seafarer. He catalogues the apostle’s eleven voyages on the Mediterranean before he set sail for Rome and calculates (although he leaves to us the addition sum!) that Paul had travelled at least 3,500 miles by sea. Yet it was more than mature experience at sea which made Paul stand out as a leader on board ship; it was his steadfast Christian faith and character.
Paul has already spoken once, when he expressed his view about where the ship should winter, but his warning was overridden (9–12). Now Luke relates his three further interventions, in each of which he issues a clear summons to the ship’s company.
a. The call to keep up their courage (27:21–26)
I am not sure that we need interpret Paul’s you should have taken my advice as a rather cheap way of scoring a point off them (21). After all, his minority stand had been the correct one. Perhaps they would be more respectful of his viewpoint in the future. At all events, he now had absolute confidence in what he had to say. Twice he urged them to keep up their courage (22, 25). On what grounds? Because none of them, he said, but only the ship, would be lost (22). How could he be so certain? Because the previous night an angel of the God to whom he belonged and whom he served had stood beside him (23), had told him not to be afraid, had promised that he must without fail stand trial before Caesar, and had added that God would give him (in answer to his prayers?) the lives of all his fellow passengers (24). These divine promises were the foundation of Paul’s summons to everybody to maintain their courage. For he believed in God, in his character and covenant, and was convinced that he would keep his promises (25), even though first the ship would have to run aground on some island (26).
b. The call to stay together (27:27–32)
It was now a fortnight since the ship had been swept from the shelter of Crete and been drifting helplessly across the Adriatic (a word which in popular ancient usage covered the whole of the east central section of the Mediterranean). But on the fourteenth night at about midnight the sailors sensed the approach of land (27), probably because they could hear waves breaking on the shore. Calculating the direction and speed of the drifting vessel (a necessarily imprecise procedure), Smith concluded that ‘a ship starting late in the evening from Clauda would, by midnight on the fourteenth, be less than three miles from the entrance of St Paul’s Bay’, Malta. So the sailors took soundings, finding first 40 m, then 30 (28). Fearing rocks or a reef, they dropped four anchors from the stern, to make sure that they would hold, and prayed for dawn (29). It was now, Luke tells us, that the sailors made an attempt to escape. Pretending that they wanted to drop more anchors, this time from the bow, they launched the lifeboat (30). But Paul somehow knew what was happening, ‘either by a natural sagacity, by nautical experience or by special revelation’, and said to Julius and his men: Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved (31). God’s promise to give him the lives of the whole ship’s company clearly presupposed that they would stay together. So the soldiers cut the lifeboat free and let it go (32).
c. The call to take food (27:33–38)
Dawn was about to break when Paul made his third intervention, urging everybody to eat because they had not done so for a fortnight, either because of the constant suspense (33), because of seasickness, because the food supplies had been saturated, or because cooking had been impossible in the gale. But now he pressed them to eat in order to survive, for, he added, seemingly with a reference to the teaching of Jesus, none of them would lose even a single hair (34). With that he set them an example, gave thanks publicly for the food, and began to eat. Because of the sequence that he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and ate, some have depicted this as a Eucharist. But neither the occasion nor the gathering of unbelieving soldiers, sailors and prisoners was appropriate for this. It was surely an ordinary meal, although the food was consecrated by thanksgiving. As a result, the rest of the ship’s company were encouraged (it is the same word as in verses 22 and 25) and followed his example (36). It is at this point that Luke mentions the number of people on board as 276 (37); had they perhaps been counted for the sake of the distribution of food? Having eaten as much as they wanted, they jettisoned the rest of the grain cargo (38).
Here then are aspects of Paul’s character which endear him to us as an integrated Christian, who combined spirituality with sanity, and faith with words. He believed that God would keep his promises and had the courage to say grace in the presence of a crowd of hard-bitten pagans. But his trust and godliness did not stop him seeing either that the ship should not take risks with the onset of winter, or that the sailors must not be allowed to escape, or that the hungry crew and passengers had to eat to survive, or (later) that he needed to gather wood to keep the beach fire burning. What a man! He was a man of God and of action; a man of the Spirit and of common sense.
4. Shipwreck on Malta (27:39 – 28:10)
a. The escape from the sea (27:39–44)
Although, even when it was light, the crew did not recognize the island, they later found that it was Malta (28:1), and James Smith was convinced that the place of the shipwreck was the traditional site which is known as St Paul’s Bay, on the island’s north-east coast. Certainly the combination of rocks (29), which he identified as the low rocky point of Koura, the bay with a sandy beach (39), and the sand-bar (41) or ‘shoal’ (rsv), literally a ‘place of two seas’, which he believed was the mud-bottomed creek between the islet of Salmonetta and the mainland, led him to say ‘how perfectly these features still distinguish the coast’. Of course, during the subsequent twenty centuries bays, beaches, sandbanks and even rocks have probably changed their contours; nevertheless, there seems no reason to question the identification.
The sailor ‘slipped the anchors . . . loosened the lashings of the steering-paddles’, which in ancient vessels did duty for rudders, ‘set the foresail to the wind, and let her drive to the beach’ (40, neb). But the ship struck sand or mud, which was probably submerged, and while the bow was immovable, the surf broke the stern to pieces (41). When the soldiers, acting without orders, intended to kill the prisoners (42), knowing that by Roman law if anyone escaped they would themselves be liable to bear this punishment, the centurion stopped them. He then ordered the swimmers to jump overboard first (43), while the rest were to use planks or pieces of wreckage with which to get ashore. ‘So it came true’, wrote J. B. Phillips, probably to express the fulfilment of God’s purpose and promise, ‘that everyone reached the shore in safety’ (44).
b. The bonfire on the beach (28:1–6)
The noun translated islanders in verses 2 and 4 is barbaroi, a word used by Greeks for all foreigners who spoke (instead of Greek) their own native language. The unusual kindness they showed the shipwrecked seafarers, by building a fire in the cold and rain of the early morning (2), indicates that they were the opposite of uncouth savages. Paul played his part by gathering a pile of brushwood, out of which there slithered a viper, dislodged by the heat. Luke does not explicitly say that Paul was bitten, although perhaps his statements that the snake fastened itself on his hand (3) and was hanging from his hand (4) are meant to imply this. Certainly the islanders took it for granted that he had been bitten. They then jumped to the conclusion that he was a murderer who, having escaped from drowning, was now being pursued and was about to be poisoned by the goddess Dikē, the personification of justice and revenge. But as they watched, Paul shook the viper into the fire and neither swelled up nor dropped down dead. Luke is obviously amused that they should immediately change their minds and call him a god. So fickle is the crowd that in Lystra Paul was first worshipped, then stoned (14:11–19), while on Malta he was first called a murderer, then a god. But the truth was at neither extreme. Instead of being drowned or poisoned by Dikē, Paul had actually been protected from both fates by Jesus.
c. The healings on the island (28:7–10)
The land near the beach belonged to a man named Publius whom Luke calls the island prōtos, its ‘first’ or most prominent person, perhaps its chief official, ‘chief magistrate’ (neb) or even ‘governor’ (jbp). He opened his home to ‘us’, Luke says, presumably a selection of the shipwrecked men, not all 276 of them (!), and for three days was lavish in his hospitality (7). While in the house, they became aware that Publius’s father was also there, ill in bed. Luke describes his complaint as fever and dysentery, which Dr Longenecker tentatively diagnoses as ‘Malta fever’, adding that it ‘was long common in Malta, Gibraltar and other Mediterranean locales’. The microorganism which causes it was apparently identified in 1887 and traced to the milk of Maltese goats. Although a vaccine has been developed, the fever lasts on average for four months and sometimes persists even for two or three years. Not in the case of Publius’s father, however. For through prayer and the laying-on of hands Paul healed him instantly (8). As the news spread, all the island’s sick came and were cured (9). Although Luke here employs a different verb (therapeuō), which was used for medical treatment and which he himself will have used for his work as a doctor, there is no hint in his text that he means us to think of Publius’s father’s healing as miraculous and of the other healings as medical. Supernatural cures were part of the apostle’s ministry, and the gratitude of the islanders was expressed in giving gifts and providing supplies (10).
5. Arrival in Rome (28:11–16)
The shipwrecked men spent the three months of winter on the island, perhaps from mid-November to mid-February. By then navigation would be beginning again, and they were ready to board their third ship, another Alexandrian vessel (cf. 27:6), which had itself wintered in one of Malta’s safe harbours. Its carved and painted figurehead was a representation of the Dioskouroi, that is, ‘the Twin Brothers’ (rsv) or ‘the heavenly twins’ (jbp), namely Castor and Pollux (11), who in Graeco-Roman mythology were the sons of Jupiter (Zeus), the gods of navigation and patrons of seafarers.
Luke makes use of his log again and plots the remaining part of the journey to Rome, by sea and land, in four stages.
First, they sailed from Malta in a north-easterly direction to Syracuse, the capital of Sicily, where they stayed three days (12).
Second, they sailed further north and put in at Rhegium on the ‘toe’ of Italy (13a). The phrase ‘made a circuit’ (rsv) or ‘sailed round’ (neb) probably means that the winds made a zigzag course or ‘tacking’ necessary.
Third, the next day they sailed on with the benefit of a southerly wind, and made such excellent progress that by the following day they had travelled the approximately 200 miles to Puteoli, which is on the Gulf of Naples (13). Here they stayed a week with some Christian brothers and sisters, possibly while Julius was awaiting final instructions regarding his prisoners.
The fourth lap of the journey was by land, not sea. After only a few miles they will have joined the famous Appian Way which led straight north to Rome, and which Richard Longenecker has called ‘the oldest, straightest and most perfectly made of all the Roman roads’. Christians in Rome had heard of their coming, however, and a delegation set out to meet Paul and his party. Some of them travelled the more than 30 miles to the Three Taverns, while others persevered a further 10 miles to the market town called the Forum of Appius. Being Roman place names, neb is right to spell them Tres Tabernae and Appii Forum. It must have been an emotional experience for Paul to meet personally the first residents in the city of his dreams and the first members of the church to which he had addressed his great theological and ethical treatise. It is not surprising that at the sight of them he ‘thanked God and took courage’ (15b, rsv). They then escorted him back along the Appian Way by which they had come. On arrival, Luke tells us that Paul was accorded custodia militaris, which permitted him to live in his own lodgings while remaining under the surveillance of a Roman soldier, to whom he was chained by the right wrist (16). The Western text inserts before this, however, that ‘the centurion delivered the prisoners to the stratopedarch’, which BAGD translates ‘military commander, commandant of a camp’. There has been much discussion as to who this was. It used to be thought that the stratopedarchos was the Prefect (commander) of the Pretorian (imperial) Guard, who had responsibility for provincial prisoners and was at that time Afranius Burrus. But according to Sherwin-White, ‘the most likely identification . . . is . . . with the officer known as princeps castrorum, the head administrator of the officium of the Pretorian Guard’, for ‘this official is the person most likely to be in executive control of prisoners awaiting trial at Rome ’.
6. The gospel for Jews and Gentiles (28:17–31)
a. Paul addresses Jews (28:17–23)
In accordance with his principle that the gospel is God’s power for salvation ‘first to the Jew, then to the Gentile’, Paul addressed himself to Jews first even in the Gentile capital of the world. Three days after his arrival (he gave himself no longer to recover from his arduous journey) he summoned the Jewish leaders to meet him. He emphasized three points. First, he had himself done nothing against the Jewish people (our people, he called them) or their ancestral customs (the customs of our ancestors, he said). Second, after he had been arrested and handed over to the Romans (17), and examined by them, they had wanted to set him free because they could find nothing against him deserving death (18). Third, it was because the Jews had objected to his release that he had felt compelled to appeal to Caesar, although he had nothing against his own people (19). Thus, Paul had done nothing against the Jews, the Romans had nothing against him, and he had nothing (i.e. no charge) against the Jews. It was in order to clarify these points that he had asked to see them. He was in every way a loyal Jew; indeed it was because of the hope of Israel, Israel’s messianic expectation fulfilled in Jesus, that he was a prisoner (20).
In reply, the Jewish leaders declared, surprisingly enough, both that no official letters about him had reached them from Judea and that no visiting Jews had said anything bad about him (21). They wanted to learn more about his views, however, because they knew that the Nazarene ‘sect’ was everywhere spoken against (22).
On the appointed day the Jews assembled in Paul’s lodgings in even greater numbers. Then all day long, from morning till evening, Paul concentrated on two things. First, he unfolded by explanation and testimony the character and coming of God’s kingdom (did he contrast it with Caesar’s?); and second, he tried to convince them about Jesus out of the Scriptures (23). This is likely to mean, as on previous occasions when he addressed Jewish people, that Paul argued for the necessary identification of the historical Jesus with the biblical Christ.
b. Paul turns to the Gentiles (28:24–28)
Paul’s day-long persuasive exposition split his audience in two, as so many times previously. Some were convinced by his reasoning; others ‘remained sceptical’ (neb) or, since a deliberate intention seems to be indicated, would not believe (24). In other words, they were deeply divided among themselves and began to go home – but only after Paul’s summing-up, whose note of solemn finality no-one could miss. He boldly applied to them words which the Holy Spirit had spoken to their ancestors in Isaiah’s day, and which Jesus had quoted of his unbelieving contemporaries, as also had John. This quotation draws a distinction between hearing and understanding, seeing and perceiving (26), and goes on to attribute people’s non-comprehension to their deliberately hard hearts, deaf ears and closed eyes, for otherwise they might see, hear, understand, turn and be saved (27). ‘In this fearful process’, wrote J. A. Alexander, ‘there are three distinguishable agencies expressly or implicitly described: the ministerial agency of the prophet, the judicial agency of God, and the suicidal agency of the people themselves.’ In other words, if we ask why people do not understand and turn to God, their unbelief could be attributed (in fact, is attributed in Scripture) now to the evangelist’s preaching, now to the judgment of God, and now to the obstinacy of the people. Alexander goes on to point out that in the Isaiah verses the first of these is the most prominent, in John 12:40 the second, and in the Matthew and Mark passages, as here in Acts 28, the third. Although our mind finds it hard to reconcile these perspectives with each other, since it is difficult to ascribe the same situation to three agencies simultaneously, yet all three are true and must be held fast with equal tenacity.
Because of the Jews’ deliberate rejection of the gospel, Paul wants them to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and that they will listen with open ears, whereas the Jews have closed theirs. Three times before, stubborn Jewish opposition has led Paul to turn to the Gentiles – in Pisidian Antioch (13:46), in Corinth (18:6) and in Ephesus (19:8–9). Now for the fourth time, in the world’s capital city, and in a yet more decisive manner, he does it again (28). Verse 29 belongs to the Western text and says that the Jews then left, ‘arguing hotly between themselves’.
c. Paul welcomes all who visit him (28:30–31)
In these last two verses of Acts there is no mention of either Jews or Gentiles, as there has been in the previous paragraphs. The most natural explanation of this is that the ‘all’ who came to see Paul included both. The terrible verses from Isaiah 6 meant neither that no Jews were converted, nor that those Jews who believed would be rejected. Nevertheless, the emphasis of Luke’s conclusion is on the Gentiles who came to Paul, who were symbols and precursors of the vast, hungry Gentile world outside. ‘They will listen!’ Paul had predicted (29). And listen they did. For two whole years they came to him and listened to him, as he stayed on in Rome, in his own rented accommodation, or ‘at his own expense’ (rsv, neb). He probably resumed his tentmaking in order to pay his way. But when visitors came to see him, he laid aside his manual labour for evangelism. And what did he talk to them about? He again spoke about the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ (as in verse 23), especially in relation to each other. He proclaimed (or ‘preached’) the former and taught the latter, Luke says. This seems to mean that he proclaimed the good news of the breaking into human history of God’s gracious rule through Christ, and that he linked this with ‘the facts about the Lord Jesus Christ’ (neb), which he also taught – the facts of his birth and life, words and works, death and resurrection, exaltation and gift of the Spirit. It was through these saving events that the kingdom of God had dawned. Probably, however, the distinction between ‘preaching’ and ‘teaching’ has been over-pressed, for all Paul’s preaching had a doctrinal content, while all his teaching had an evangelistic purpose.
The final words of the book are the adverbial expression meta pasēs parrēsias, with all boldness, and the adverb akōlytos, without hindrance. Parrēsia has been a characteristic word of Acts ever since the Twelve exhibited boldness and prayed for more (4:13, 31). And Paul had asked the Ephesians to pray that his ministry might bear the same mark. Parrēsia denotes speech which is candid (with no concealment of truth), clear (with no obscurity of expression) and confident (with no fear of consequences). ‘Without hindrance’ means that, although the military surveillance continued, there was no ban by the authorities on Paul’s speaking. Though his hand was still bound, his mouth was open for Jesus Christ. Though he was chained, the word of God was not. Together Luke’s two adverbs describe the freedom which the gospel enjoyed, having neither internal nor external restraint. In consequence, we may be sure that many were converted, including the runaway slave Onesimus.
7. Conclusion: the providence of God
Many readers of Acts who have no problem with chapter 28 (Paul’s arrival and ministry in Rome) find great difficulty in chapter 27 (the voyage, the storm and the shipwreck). Why on earth did Luke devote so much of his precious space to this graphic but seemingly unedifying story? To be sure, his reputation as an accurate chronicler is enhanced by it, and his description of Paul in a crisis situation is helpful. But the length of the narrative still seems out of proportion to its value.
It is this feeling which has prompted some students to look in the story for deeper spiritual meanings. One such was August van Ryn, who was born in the Netherlands in 1890 but became an American preacher and teacher. In his Acts of the Apostles: The Unfinished Work of Christ he developed an elaborate allegory. The ship is the visible church, whose history has been a voyage from ‘its pristine perfection’ in Jerusalem at Pentecost, through ‘much contrary wind and violent storms’ (persecution and false doctrine), to ‘its moral and spiritual wreck in Rome’, that is, in the Roman Catholic Church. Those on board are a mixed multitude. Some resemble the centurion, who believed the captain and owner of the ship (church leaders) ‘more than those things which were spoken by Paul’, while others, even in the midst of darkness, storm and fear, listen to Paul’s teaching and are saved. These also throw the wheat into the sea, casting their bread on the waters – that is, broadcasting gospel seed far and wide. The crew struggle to undergird the ship (well-meaning people who try to hold the church together by union schemes). But they cannot prevent it from being wrecked, from being broken into a thousand fragments. The allegory is far-fetched, van Ryn admitted, but he added, ‘personally I like this far-fetchedness’. I hope my readers do not, however. Unprincipled allegorizations bring Scripture into disrepute, and cause confusion, not enlightenment.
What, then, is the major lesson we are intended to learn from Acts 27 and 28? It concerns the providence of God who ‘works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will’, declares that ‘no wisdom, no insight, no plan . . . can succeed against the Lord’, and engineers even evil ‘for the good of those who love him’. This providential activity of God is seen in these chapters in two complementary ways, first in bringing Paul to Rome, his desired goal, and second, in bringing him there as a prisoner, his undesired condition. It was an unexpected combination of circumstances: what lay behind it?
First, Luke intends us to marvel with him over the safe conduct of Paul to Rome. It is not so much that Paul had said ‘I must visit Rome’ (19:21), as that Jesus had said to him ‘You must . . . testify in Rome’ (23:11). Yet circumstance after circumstance seemed calculated to make this impossible. Paul had expressed his intention to proceed straight from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he was arrested in Jerusalem, subjected to endless trials, imprisoned in Caesarea, threatened with assassination by the Jews, and then nearly drowned in the Mediterranean, killed by the soldiers and poisoned by a snake! Each incident seemed to be designed to prevent him from reaching his God-planned, God-promised destination. Since Luke concentrates on the storm, we need to remember that the sea, reminiscent of the primeval chaos, was a regular Old Testament symbol of evil powers in opposition to God. It was not the forces of nature (water, wind and snake) or the machinations of human beings (schemes, plots and threats) which were arrayed against Paul, but demonic forces at work through them. Scripture is full of examples of the devil seeking to thwart God’s saving purpose through his people and his Christ. He tried through Pharaoh to drown the baby Moses, through Haman to annihilate the Jews, through Herod the Great to destroy the infant Jesus in Bethlehem, and through the Sanhedrin to stifle the apostolic witness and smother the church at its birth. And now through the storm at sea he attempted to stop Paul bringing his gospel to the capital of the world.
But God obstructed his purpose. Luke increases the excitement of his story by letting us into his secret, namely that Jesus had promised Paul in advance that he would reach Rome (23:11). So we know from the beginning that he will get there. But as the narrative proceeds and the storm becomes ever more violent, until all hope is lost, we wonder how on earth he will be rescued. Will he make it? Yes he will! He does! For he was rescued by the divine overruling, which Luke makes clear by his repeated use of the vocabulary of ‘salvation’.
So by God’s providence Paul reached Rome safe and sound. But he arrived as a prisoner! Christ’s promise that he would testify in Rome had not included that information. How was this compatible with the providence of God? It seems to me reasonable to argue that the apostle, who was brought to Rome to witness, found his witness expanded, enriched and authenticated by his two-year custody in the city.
First, his witness was expanded, not only because of the constant flow of people visiting him, but especially because he witnessed to Christ in the presence of Caesar. This has, of course, been questioned. Although ‘down to the time of Nero’, Sherwin-White writes, ‘the emperors themselves heard the cases that fell under their cognitio’, yet in his early years ‘Nero avoided personal jurisdiction, and then only accepted a case for special reasons’. Instead, he normally delegated the trial of capital cases, even though ‘the sentences were confirmed by him afterwards’. So was the case of Paul one of the exceptions? I think we should argue that it was. Leaving aside the possibility that Paul’s deliverance ‘from the lion’s mouth’ was a reference to his release by Nero, the strongest argument is Jesus’ promise to Paul on the ship, ‘You must stand trial before Caesar’ (27:24). If his first promise to Paul (about reaching Rome) was fulfilled, is it likely that Luke would have included his second promise (about standing before Caesar) unless he knew that it too was fulfilled? I think not. In this case we are permitted to imagine that the prisoner who stood before Felix, Festus and Agrippa stood before Nero also, and that in the world’s most prestigious court, to the world’s most prestigious person, he faithfully proclaimed Christ. Yes, Nero himself, that artistic but bloodthirsty genius, heard the gospel from the lips of the apostle to the Gentiles. That was only possible because he was a prisoner on trial.
Second, Paul’s witness was enriched by those two years. It is difficult for us to imagine how such a born activist as Paul managed to endure nearly five years of comparative inactivity (two in the Caesarea prison, two under house arrest in Rome, and about six months in between voyaging from Caesarea to Rome). Were they wasted years? Was he champing at the bit and pawing the ground like a restless and rebellious horse? No, his prison letters breathe an atmosphere of joy, peace, patience and contentment, because he believed in the sovereignty of God. Moreover, however much he longed to get out and serve the contemporary church, yet, as a result of his two years’ partial withdrawal in Rome, he has bequeathed to posterity in his four prison letters an even richer spiritual legacy. Paul probably neither knew nor understood this. But we do.
Of course, Paul did not write all his letters in prison. He wrote to the Galatians in the heat of theological debate on his way up to Jerusalem for the Council; he wrote both letters to the Thessalonians within weeks of his mission in their city; and he wrote to the Corinthians and Romans in the midst of a relentlessly busy ministry. So he did not find it necessary to have a spell in prison in order to get his writing done! Nevertheless, I maintain that in God’s providence there is something distinctive and special about those prison letters. It is not only that he had more time now to reflect and to pray; it is also that the substance of these letters owes something to his prison experience. He was facing trial and possible death, but knew that he had already risen with Christ. He was awaiting the emperor’s pleasure, but knew that the supreme authority to whom he bowed was not the Lord Caesar, but the Lord Christ.
So then (the Holy Spirit using his custody to clarify and enforce this truth), the three main prison letters (to the Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians) set forth more powerfully than anywhere else the supreme, sovereign, undisputed and unrivalled lordship of Jesus Christ. The person and work of Christ are given cosmic proportions, for God created all things through Christ and has reconciled all things through Christ. The fullness of the Godhead, which dwelt in Christ, had also worked through him. Christ is the agent of all God’s work of creation and redemption. In addition, Christ having humbled himself to the cross, God has highly exalted him. All three prison letters say so. God has given him the name or rank above all others. All things have been put under his feet. It is God’s will that in everything he might have the supremacy. Was it not through his very confinement that his eyes were opened to see the victory of Christ and the fullness of life, power and freedom which is given to those who belong to Christ? Paul’s perspective was adjusted, his horizon extended, his vision clarified and his witness enriched by his prison experience.
Third, his ministry was authenticated by his sufferings. Nothing proves the sincerity of our beliefs like our willingness to suffer for them. So Paul had to suffer, and be seen to suffer, for the gospel he was preaching. It was not only that in Isaiah the servant who brings light to the nations must suffer, that the vocations to service and to suffering are intertwined, that the witness and the martyr are one (martys), and that the seed which multiplies is the seed which dies. It is also that Paul was suffering for ‘his’ gospel, for the ‘mystery’ revealed to him that Jews and Gentiles were equal members of the body of Christ. That is why he could write of ‘my sufferings for you’, and could describe himself as Christ’s prisoner ‘for the sake of you Gentiles’. Paul’s arrest, imprisonment and trials were all due to his uncompromising espousal of the Gentile cause. It was because of his witness to the Gentiles that the Jews rose up in such fury against him. Paul paid dearly for his loyalty to the freeness and universality of the gospel. But his appeals to the churches to live a life worthy of the gospel were all the more authentic because he was himself a prisoner on account of the gospel. He was ready to die for it; they must live to adorn it.
Was Paul released after the ‘two whole years’ Luke mentions (30)? He clearly expected to be. And the Pastoral Epistles supply evidence that he was, for he resumed his travels for about two more years before being rearrested, retried, condemned and executed in ad 64. By then he could write that he had fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith. Now the next generation must step into his shoes and continue the work. Just as Luke’s Gospel ended with the prospect of a mission to the nations, so Acts ends with the prospect of a mission radiating from Rome to the world. Luke’s description of Paul preaching ‘with all boldness’ and ‘without hindrance’ symbolizes a wide-open door through which we in our day have to pass. The Acts of the Apostles finished long ago. But the acts of the followers of Jesus will continue until the end of the world, and their words will spread to the ends of the earth.