The Early Church

For the king understands these matters, so to him I express myself freely, because I am sure that none of these things have been hidden from him. After all, they didn’t happen in some back alley.

King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you believe!”

Agrippa said to Sha’ul, “In this short time, you’re trying to convince me to become Messianic?”

Sha’ul replied, “Whether it takes a short time or a long time, I wish to God that not only you, but also everyone hearing me today, might become just like me except for these chains!”

Then the king got up, and with him the governor and Bernice and the others sitting with them.

After they had left, they said to one another, “This man is doing nothing that deserves either death or prison.”

And Agrippa said to Festus, “If he hadn’t appealed to the Emperor, he could have been released.”

Once it had been decided that we should set sail for Italy, they handed Sha’ul and some other prisoners over to an officer of the Emperor’s Regiment named Julius.

We embarked in a ship from Adramyttium which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of the province of Asia, and put out to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica.

The next day, we landed at Tzidon; and Julius considerately allowed Sha’ul to go visit his friends and receive what he needed.

Putting to sea from there, we sailed close to the sheltered side of Cyprus because the winds were against us,

then across the open sea along the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia; and so we reached Myra in Lycia.

There the Roman officer found an Alexandrian vessel sailing to Italy and put us aboard.

For a number of days we made little headway, and we arrived off Cnidus only with difficulty. The wind would not let us continue any farther along the direct route; so we ran down along the sheltered side of Crete from Cape Salmone;

and, continuing to struggle on, hugging the coast, we reached a place called Pleasant Harbor, near the town of Lasea.

Since much time had been lost, and continuing the voyage was risky, because it was already past Yom-Kippur, Sha’ul advised them,

“Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be a catastrophe, not only with huge losses to the cargo and the ship but with loss of our lives as well.”

However, the officer paid more attention to the pilot and the ship’s owner than to what Sha’ul said.

Moreover, since the harbor was not well suited to sitting out the winter, the majority reached the decision to sail on from there in the hope of reaching Phoenix, another harbor in Crete, and wintering there, where it is protected from the southwest and northwest winds.

When a gentle southerly breeze began to blow, they thought that they had their goal within grasp; so they raised the anchor and started coasting by Crete close to shore.

But before long there struck us from land a full gale from the northeast, the kind they call an Evrakilon.

The ship was caught up and unable to face the wind, so we gave way to it and were driven along.

As we passed into the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with strenuous effort to get control of the lifeboat.

They hoisted it aboard, then fastened cables tightly around the ship itself to reinforce it. Fearing they might run aground on the Syrtis sandbars, they lowered the topsails and thus continued drifting.

But because we were fighting such heavy weather, the next day they began to jettison non-essentials;