[291] 5. THE VOYAGE TO CAESAREIA. (14) AND WHEN HE MET US AT ASSOS, WE TOOK HIM ON [292] BOARD, AND CAME TO MITYLENE; (15) AND SAILING FROM THENCE ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, WE REACHED a point on the mainland OPPOSITE CHIOS; AND ON THE MORROW WE STRUCK ACROSS TO SAMOS, AND [AFTER MAKING A STAY AT TROGYLLIA] ON THE NEXT DAY WE CAME TO MILETUS. (16) FOR PAUL HAD DECIDED TO SAIL PAST EPHESUS, TO AVOID SPENDING TIME IN ASIA; 1 FOR HE WAS HASTENING, IF IT WERE PENTECOST. (17) AND FROM MILETUS HE SENT TO EPHESUS, AND SUMMONED THE ELDERS OF THE CHURCH. (18) AND WHEN THEY WERE COME TO HIM, HE SAID UNTO THEM... (36) AND WHEN HE HAD THUS SPOKEN, HE KNEELED DOWN WITH THEM ALL, AND PRAYED. (37) AND THEY ALL WEPT SORE, AND FELL ON PAUL'S NECK, AND KISSED HIM, SORROWING MOST OF ALL FOR THE WORD WHICH HE HAD SPOKEN, THAT THEY WILL BEHOLD HIS FACE NO MORE. (38) AND THEY BROUGHT HIM ON HIS WAY UNTO THE SHIP. (XXI 1) AND WHEN IT CAME TO PASS THAT WE, TEARING OURSELVES FROM THEM, SET SAIL, WE MADE A STRAIGHT RUN TO COS, AND THE NEXT DAY TO RHODES, AND FROM THENCE TO PATARA [and Myra]. (2) AND, FINDING A SHIP GOING OVER SEA TO PHŒNICE, WE WENT ON BOARD AND SET SAIL. (3) AND, HAVING SIGHTED CYPRUS, LEAVING IT ON OUR LEFT, WE SAILED UNTO SYRIA, AND LANDED AT TYRE; FOR THERE THE SHIP WAS TO UNLADE. (4) AND HAVING FOUND THE DISCIPLES, WE TARRIED THERE SEVEN DAYS; AND THESE SAID THROUGH THE SPIRIT TO PAUL NOT [293] TO SET FOOT IN JERUSALEM. (5) AND WHEN IT CAME TO PASS THAT WE HAD FINISHED OUR TIME, WE DEPARTED AND WENT ON OUR JOURNEY; AND THEY ALL, WITH WIVES AND CHILDREN, BROUGHT US ON OUR WAY TILL WE WERE OUT OF THE CITY. AND KNEELING DOWN ON THE BEACH, WE PRAYED, (6) AND BADE EACH OTHER FAREWELL; AND WE WENT ON BOARD SHIP, BUT THEY RETURNED HOME AGAIN. (7) AND FINISHING THE short RUN FROM TYRE, WE REACHED PTOLEMAIS; AND WE SALUTED THE BRETHREN AND ABODE WITH THEM ONE DAY.

The ship evidently stopped every evening. The reason lies in the wind, which in the Ęgean during the summer generally blows from the north, beginning at a very early hour in the morning; in the late afternoon it dies away; at sunset there is a dead calm, and thereafter a gentle south wind arises and blows during the night. The start would be made before sunrise; and it would be necessary for all passengers to go on board soon after midnight in order to be ready to sail with the first breath from the north.

In v. 14 our translation (agreeing with Blass) assumes that the reading {suvebalen} is correct; but the great MSS. read {suneballen}, and perhaps the imperfect may be used, implying that Paul did not actually enter Assos, but was descried and taken in by boat as he was nearing the city. On Monday, April 25, they reached Mitylene before the wind fell; and on Tuesday afternoon they stopped at a point opposite Chios (probably near Cape Argennum). Hence on Wednesday morning they ran straight across to the west point of Samos, and thence kept in towards Miletus; but [294] when the wind fell, they had not got beyond the promontory Trogyllia at the entrance to the gulf, and there, as the Bezan Text mentions, they spent the evening. Early on Thursday, April 28, they stood across the gulf (which is now in great part filled up by the silt of the river Maeander) to Miletus. Here they found that they could reckon on a stay of some days, and Paul sent a messenger to Ephesus. The messenger could not reach Ephesus that day, for the land road round the gulf made a vast circuit, and the wind would prevent him from sailing across to Priene in the forenoon. Moreover, it would take some time to land, and to engage a messenger. In the early afternoon there would arise a sea-breeze blowing up the gulf (called in modern times Imbat, {embatês}), which would permit the messenger to sail to the north side of the gulf. He would probably land at Priene, cross the hills, and thereafter take the coast road to Ephesus, which he might reach during the night. Some time would be required to summon the presbyters; and they could not travel so fast as a single chosen messenger. They would show good speed if they reached Priene in the evening and were ready to sail to Miletus with the morning wind. The third day of Paul's stay at Miletus, then, was devoted to the presbyters; and we cannot suppose that the ship left Miletus before Sunday morning, May 1, while it is possible that the start took place a day later.

On that day they reached Cos, on May 2 Rhodes, May 3 Patara, May 4 Myra, and, probably, May 7 Tyre.

In Tyre they stayed seven days, and sailed on May 13 for Ptolemais, where they spent the day, and on May 14 they reached Cęsareia. As Pentecost was on May 28, they had still a considerable time before them. If Paul remained several days in Cęsareia, then, the reason must be that there was still plenty of time to do so without endangering his purpose.

We reach the same conclusion from observing the author's concise style. After stating the object of the journey in v. 16, he leaves the reader to gather from his silence that the object was attained. The fact was clear in his own mind, and he was content with one single incidental allusion to it, not for its own sake (he as a Greek felt little interest in Jewish festivals), but to explain a point in which he was interested, viz., the sailing past Ephesus without touching there.

The statement in v. 16 has led to a common misconception that Paul was sailing in a vessel chartered by himself, whose stoppages he could control as he pleased. But if Paul had been able to fix where the vessel should stop, it was obviously a serious waste of time to go to Miletus and summon the Ephesian elders thither; the shorter way would have been to stop at Ephesus and there make his farewell address. Clearly the delay of three days at Miletus was forced on him by the ship's course, and the facts of the journey were these. From Neapolis they sailed in a ship bound for Troas. Here they had to transship; and some delay was experienced in finding a suitable passage. Paul would not voluntarily, have spent seven days at Troas: the length of a coasting voyage was too uncertain for him to waste so many days at the beginning, when he was hastening to Jerusalem. After a week, [296] two chances presented themselves: one ship intended to make no break on its voyage, except at Miletus, the other to stop at Ephesus. The latter ship was, for some reason, the slower; either it was not to sail further south than Ephesus (in which case time might be lost there in finding a passage); or it was a slow ship, that intended to stop in several other harbours. The shortness of the time determined Paul to choose the ship that went straight to Miletus, and "to sail past Ephesus"; and the pointed statement proves that the question had been discussed, and doubtless the Ephesian delegates-begged a visit to their city.

To Luke the interest of Pentecost lay not in itself, but in its furnishing the reason why Paul did not go to Ephesus. There, as in so many other touches, we see the Greek, to whom the Jews were little more than "Barbaroi".

We notice that Paul, having been disappointed in his first intention of spending Passover at Jerusalam, was eager at any rate to celebrate Pentecost there. For the purpose which he had at heart, the formation of a perfect unity between the Jewish and the non-Jewish sections of the Church, it was important to be in Jerusalem to show his respect for one of the great feasts.

Modern discussion of the voyage to Cęsareia illustrates the unnecessary obscurity in which a remarkably accurate narrative has been involved by over-subtlety, want of experience of rough-and-ready travel, and inattention to the peculiar method of Luke as a narrator. As we have seen, only two numbers are at all doubtful: the length of the stay at Miletus, and the duration of the over-sea voyage to Tyre; but in each case a day [291] more or less is the utmost permissible variation. We find that Paul had fully thirteen days to spare when he reached Cęsareia. Yet many excellent scholars have got so far astray in this simple reckoning of days as to maintain that Paul was too late. Even Weiss, in his edition (in many respects excellent), so lately as 1893, concludes that already in Tyre Paul found that it was impossible to reach Jerusalem in time. Yet, at a pinch, the journey from Tyre to Jerusalem could have been performed in four days.

The farewell speech to the Ephesians, simple, pathetic, and characteristic of Paul as it. is, contains little that concerns our special purpose. Paul intimates clearly that this is his farewell before entering on his enterprise in the West: "Ye all shall no longer see my face". With a characteristic gesture he shows his hands: "these hands ministered unto my necessities".

Incidentally we notice the ancient custom of reckoning time: the residence in Asia, which can hardly have been more than two years six months at the most, is estimated loosely as "three years".

The clinging affection which is expressed in the farewell scene, and in the "tearing ourselves away"of XXI 1, makes a very pathetic picture.

Myra is mentioned on this voyage in the Bezan Text, and there can be no doubt that the ship on which the company was embarked either entered the harbour of Myra, or, at least, went close to it before striking across the open sea west of Cyprus to the Syrian coast. The voyage may be taken as typical of the course which hundreds of ships took every year, along a route familiar from time immemorial. It had [298] been a specially frequented route since the age of the earlier Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings, when, as Canon Hicks remarks, "there must have been daily communication between Cos and Alexandria ". 2

The harbour of Myra seems to have been the great port for the direct cross-sea traffic to the coasts of Syria and Egypt. It was the seat of the sailors god, to whom they offered their prayers before starting on the direct long course, and paid their vows on their safe arrival; this god survived in the Christianised form, St. Nicholas of Myra, the patron-saint of sailors, who held the same position in the maritime world of the Levant as St. Phokas of Sinope did in that of the Black Sea (where he was the Christianised form of Achilles Pontarches, the Ruler of the Pontos).

Myra is termed by the pilgrim Sawulf (as I learn from Dr. Tomaschek) "the harbour of the Adriatic Sea, as Constantinople is of the Aegean Sea"; and this importance is hardly intelligible till we recognise its relation to the Syrian and Egyptian traffic. The prevailing winds in the Levant throughout the season are westerly; and these westerly breezes blow almost with the steadiness of trade-winds. Hence the ancient ships, even though they rarely made what sailors call "a long leg"across the sea, were in the habit of running direct from Myra to the Syrian, or to the Egyptian coast. On the return voyage an Alexandrian ship could run north to Myra, if the wind was nearly due west; but, if it shifted towards north-west (from [299] which quarter the Etesian winds blew steadily for forty days from July 20), the ships of Alexandria ran for the Syrian coast. The same steady winds, which favoured the run from Myra to Tyre, made the return voyage direct from Tyre to Myra an impossibility. Hence the regular course for ships from Syria was to keep northwards past the east end of Cyprus till they reached the coast of Asia Minor; and then, by using the land winds which blow off the coast for some part of almost every day, and aided also to some extent by the current which sets steadily westward along the Karamanian coast (as it is now called), these traders from Syria worked their way along past Myra to Cnidos at the extreme south-western corner of Asia Minor.

It may, then, be safely assumed that Myra was visited by Paul's ship, as the Bezan Text asserts. But the addition of "and Myra"is a mere gloss (though recording a true fact), for it implies that the transshipment took place at Myra. We need not hesitate to accept the authority of the great MSS. that Paul and his company found at Patara a ship about to start on the direct Syrian course, and went on board of it (probably because their ship did not intend to make the direct voyage, or was a slower vessel). Luke then hurries over the direct voyage, mentioning only the fact which specially interested him, that they sighted the western point of Cyprus. He did not mention Myra; he was giving only a brief summary of the voyage, and for some reason the visit to Myra did not interest him.

Many circumstances might occur to deprive the visit of interest and to make Luke omit it (as he omits many other sights) from his brief summary of the [300] voyage. Formerly I illustrated this by my own experience. I was in the port of Myra in the course of a voyage; yet I never saw either the town or the harbour, and would probably omit Myra, if I were giving a summary description of my experiences on that voyage.

At Tyre the vessel stayed seven days unloading; it must therefore have been one of the larger class of merchant vessels; and probably only that class ventured to make the direct sea voyage from Lycia by the west side of Cyprus. Small vessels clung to the coast. As the same ship 3 was going on as far as Ptolemais, and as there was still abundant time for the rest of the journey, Paul remained until the allotted time of its stay was over, v. 5. None of the party seems to have known Tyre, for they had to seek out the Brethren there. The hearty welcome which they received from strangers, whose sole bond of union lay in their common religion, makes Luke dwell on this scene as showing the solidarity of feeling in the Church. There took place a kindly farewell on the shore at Tyre, as at Miletus; but the longing and sorrow of long personal friendship and love could not here be present to the same extent as there. The scenes are similar, and yet how different! Such touches of diversity amid resemblance could be given only by the eye-witness.

The ship completed the short voyage to Ptolemais early; and the party spent the day with the Brethren; and went on to Cęsareia next day. Probably they went in the same ship. The emphasis laid on "finishing the voyage"from Tyre to Ptolemais is due to the fact that it was probably over about 10 A.M.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Literally, "that it might not come to pass that he spent time in Asia".

2 Paton and Hicks Inscriptions of Cos p. xxxiii. I should hardly venture to speak so strongly; but Mr Hicks is an excellent authority on that period.

3 In v. 2 "a ship," in v. 6 "the ship".