Acts 28:11

Voyage from Malta to Puteoli, 11-14.

Acts 28:11. After three months. Probably it was now February. The earliest opportunity which the weather permitted would be taken. This is one of the indications of time which are to be taken into account in estimating the relative chronology of St. Paul's life.

A ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle. The same circumstances of weather which had caused so much disaster to the other ship, had kept this ship in the harbour of Valetta. This too, like the other, was doubtless a corn ship.

Whose sign was Castor and Pollux. A reference may be allowed at this point to the articles ‘Ship,' ‘Castor and Pollux,' and ‘Rhegium,' in the Dictionary of the Bible, The ‘great twin brethren,' Castor and Pollux (the ‘Dioscuri,' as the name is given here in the Greek), were the tutelary gods of Greek sailors (Horace, Od. i. 3, 2, and 12, 28), and their presence was often imagined in the phosphorescent light the fires of St. Elmo playing on the masts of Mediterranean ships. Their figures were doubtless painted in the customary conventional form, with stars above their beads, on each side of the bow of the ship. St. Luke's notice of the fact is valuable as an indication of the presence of an eye-witness. The thought, too, of an Egyptian ship, with heathen symbols, bearing the gospel to Italy, is suggestive of many interesting reflections. See some reflections of this kind in Bishop Wordsworth's Commentary.