Off to Sea

 Tenth Friday after Pentecost

Lectionary Texts:

Friday;

2 Samuel 14:1-33

 

Saturday:

2 Samuel 15:1-37 

Thanks to April for her comments.

 

We return to Acts Bible Study. Please read Acts 27:1-12.

The trials are over. Chapter 27 is entirely about the sea journey on the way to Rome. One thing as horrifying to me, personally, as the sea journey, is the difficulty of the Greek in chapters 27-28. It is filled with nautical terminology. You won't find that in the rest of the NT. The technical term for words used only once in the entire NT is hapax legomena. There are 25 hapax legeomena in these two chapters. Learning that much new vocabulary that occurs nowhere else was difficult. In my Ph.D. oral prelim on the Greek NT I was responsible for translating at sight anything in the NT. The prof administering the exam was the toughest prof in the program, W.D. Davies a Welshman educated at Cambridge University in England. He frequently talked about how bad American education was.  I prayed that he would not ask me to translate anything from Acts 27 or 28. Thanks be to God; he didn't. I passed.

 

Luke is back to using the pronoun we. It appears that he accompanied Paul on this journey. His detailed descriptions of ports, winds, and storms appears to have been his own eyewitness account. If you look at the maps in the back of your Bible, you can follow Paul's route. Most will show it as the Fourth Missionary Journey, although some call it Journey to Rome. In our reading for today, you can see that they stayed fairly close to shore all the way to Crete. 

Note that Paul is on cargo ships. Getting him transferred from Caesarea is not their primary purpose. They are sailing to move cargo from one port to another. There are some other prisoners being transferred as well. Luke was not a prisoner but had apparently booked passage to accompany Paul. A centurion named Julius commanded the guards and was in charge of the prisoners. Luke speaks highly of him. Julius trusted Paul enough to let him visit friends in Sidon. Unfortunately Julius did not trust Paul's weather forecasting.

Luke gives considerable information about winds and sailing conditions. Some commentaries go into great detail on this, but I, not being a sailor, don't know enough to comment. We are accustomed to transportation going on schedule. That was not possible in antiquity. Everything depended on winds. The ship captains knew about prevailing winds at different times of the year, but day to day changes and irregularities prevented any accurate scheduling. When the wind stopped, the ship stopped. A two day journey could become a two week journey. 

There was no sea travel in winter. Seas were too rough. Everything needed to be done in the warm months. Luke says in v. 9 that the fast was over and sailing had become dangerous. The fast was the fast for the Day of Atonement at the end of the High Holy Days. Although there could be as much as almost a month's variation (like our Easter), that day was usually in the last half of September or early October. It was during this transition time from hot to cold that the sea began to be dangerous. 

The ship goes only as far as Myra on the southern coast of what is now Turkey. The centurion has to find another ship that will take them to Rome. He found one from Alexandria, one of whose stops was Myra. Paul warned them it would be dangerous to go, but the captain pressed on. They sailed to the south side of Crete with some difficulty. The journey gets a lot tougher in tomorrow's study.

God of those who sail the seas,

We pray for nautical wisdom for all captains and for good teamwork among sailors. We are thankful that we now have the technological means to see the weather ahead and make good decisions. We are thankful that you gave Paul's a divine means. In Christ's name. Amen.

Faithfully,

Christian