Acts 28:1

ἐπέγνωμεν for ἐπέγνωσαν with אABC. Vulg. ‘cognovimus.’

1. διασωθέντες τότε ἐπέγνωμεν, when we were escaped, then we knew, i.e. we found out from the natives who were on the shore.

Μελίτη, Melita. They would at once learn what the land was from the natives whom they found on the shore. Tradition has from the earliest times identified Melita with the modern Malta. But Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Adm. Imp. p. 36) and others after him have attempted to shew that Meleda, a small island in the Adriatic Sea, not far from the coast of Illyria, was the scene of the shipwreck. They have supported this opinion by confining the sense of Adria (Acts 27:27) to the modern Adriatic Sea, by their explanation of ‘barbarians’ in the next verse of this chapter, and by the absence of vipers at the present time from the island of Malta. But the latter circumstance is not without a parallel. The advance of cultivation and alteration of temperature have destroyed poisonous beasts out of other districts besides Malta, and the two first arguments are founded on mistakes. Moreover it is hardly possible to conceive that a ship should be driven for fourteen days in the Adriatic without going ashore, and the direction in which they sailed after finding a fresh vessel (Acts 28:11-12) is also completely opposed to the idea that they were wrecked in the Gulf of Venice.