Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Acts 27:27-44, Shipwreck off Malta
On the fourteenth night the sailors sense land, drop anchors from the stern and try to slip away in the ship's boat. Paul urges everyone to eat and gives thanks over bread, and when the ship breaks up the centurion stops the soldiers from killing the prisoners; all 276 reach the shore.
Acts 27:27-44, in every translation this tool compares.
Two weeks into the storm the sailors sense land, drop anchors behind and try to escape in the lifeboat, but Paul warns that everyone must stay aboard, and the soldiers cut the boat loose. Before dawn Paul urges all 276 people to eat, gives thanks for bread where all can see, and their spirits lift, then dump the grain to lighten the ship. At daylight they run aground on a sandbar and the stern is smashed by the waves. The soldiers want to kill the prisoners to stop escapes, but the centurion protects Paul, and everyone reaches shore by swimming or clinging to wreckage.
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A ship blown southwest from Cauda would take about two weeks to reach Malta, and the ancient Adriatic Sea reached that far south (Keener and his notes; the ESV Study Bible). Anchors were normally dropped from the bow; dropping them from the stern kept the ship from swinging round (Keener and his notes), and archaeologists have found lines of anchors laid and cut one after another before a wreck (Wright). Paul's thanks and breaking of bread follow the Jewish custom of the head of a household at a meal (Keener and his notes; the CSB Study Bible). Large ships often carried several hundred people, and Josephus writes that the ship on which he was wrecked in the Adriatic carried "about six hundred in number." The traditional site, St Paul's Bay on Malta, fits the details (Keener and his notes). Guards answered for their prisoners: the CSB Study Bible says a soldier whose prisoner escaped suffered the prisoner's punishment, the cultural backgrounds notes say shipwreck would normally absolve them but they took no chances, and Keener says they were less liable if prisoners died at sea than if they escaped.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Acts 27:27, 27:29, 27:35, 27:37 and 27:42
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Acts 27:27-28, 27:29, 27:35-36, 27:37, 27:39 and 27:42-43
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Acts 27:27
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Acts 27:35 and 27:42
- Josephus, The Life of Flavius Josephus 3, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part Two, comment on Acts 27:13-32
