by N. T. Wright
One common view is that Luke wrote Acts to provide material in Paul’s defense. Whether it was written early enough for his trial before Nero or whether it was written a long time afterward but to make the same point in retrospect does not ultimately affect our understanding of Paul here. This is the last time we see him give his own answer to our overall questions: What made him tick, and in particular what had happened on the road to Damascus to bring it all about? And how, granted all this, might we explain how the movement launched by this strange, enigmatic but energetic man would become so successful so quickly?
Paul’s speech before Agrippa, Bernice, Festus, and their retinue is longer than either the Areopagus address or the farewell address to the Ephesian elders. Like them, however, it must be a great deal shorter than what Paul actually said on that occasion. However, this speech presses so many of the buttons that we have seen again and again in Paul’s own writings that we can be sure it summarizes fairly accurately what was said. The main upshot of it all—and this is why an earlier generation of readers, determined to stop Paul from being “Jewish,” rejected the portrait in Acts!—is that Paul had been a loyal Jew from the start. He was acting as a loyal Jew at the time when he met Jesus on the road; his mission in the wider world had been on behalf of Israel’s God, who was now claiming the whole world as his own; and he was simply doing his best to tell the world what Moses and the prophets had been saying all along, namely, “that the Messiah would suffer, that he would be the first to rise from the dead, and that he would proclaim light to the people and to the nations.”32 Paul had always been, and still remained, a loyal Jew. That was the whole point.
It was the point he wanted to make to Herod Agrippa II, who might just have been able to wield some influence on wider Jewish opinion. It was the point he wanted to make in the face of the accusations of disloyalty, of treating the Torah too loosely and plotting to desecrate the Temple. It was the point Luke wanted to make as well whenever he was writing—that despite the repeated accusations, Paul was not trying to overthrow the Jewish tradition, culture, and way of life. It was just that, as other loyal Jews have supposed from time to time, he believed that Israel’s Messiah had appeared, that he knew the Messiah’s name and his qualifications, and that this Messiah had done something much more powerful than merely defeating a pagan army. He had overthrown the dark powers that had kept the nations in captivity; he had built a new “Temple,” a worldwide community in which the divine glory had come to dwell by the spirit; and he had now sent out messengers to tell the nations what devout Jews had wanted to tell them all along, that they should turn from idols to serve the living God. All this is built into Paul’s account of what Jesus said to him in their first meeting and into Paul’s own account of what he had been doing as a result.
The heart of the speech is of course the third and final account in Acts of the appearance of Jesus to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. This time the story is at its fullest. No doubt Luke, editing all three versions, has arranged them in a crescendo. And this fuller version gives us yet another angle on our underlying questions of what made Paul the man he was, what the Damascus Road event had done to him, and why his work bore fruit beyond his dreams.
The opening challenge has become proverbial. As in the two other versions, Jesus asks Saul why he is persecuting him, but this time he adds a wry comment: “It’s hard for you, this kicking against the goads.”33 This is an allusion to a well-known Greek proverb about humans trying to resist the divine will, which is exactly what Saul’s teacher, Gamaliel, had warned against.34 In the mind of Saul of Tarsus at the time, and of Paul in this speech, there is already a profound irony: Jesus, commissioning him to go and tell the polytheistic nations about the One God, is warning him about his present behavior—by using a saying from the very pagan traditions from which people must turn away! The proverb in this context, of course, is designed to show the inner tensions within the “zeal” of young Saul. This moment corresponds exactly to what Paul had written in Romans about his fellow Jews in a lament with strong autobiographical echoes:
I can testify on their behalf that they have a zeal for God; but it is not based on knowledge. They were ignorant, you see, of God’s covenant faithfulness, and they were trying to establish a covenant status of their own; so they didn’t submit to God’s faithfulness. The Messiah, you see, is the goal of the law, so that covenant membership may be available for all who believe.35
That passage, like Paul’s present speech, goes on at once to indicate that since the One God has unveiled his ultimate covenant purpose in this Messiah—this unexpected, unwanted, and indeed scandalous crucified Jesus—then the nations are to be summoned into a new kind of community. His death has defeated the dark powers that kept the nations captive, so that the stigma of idolatry, uncleanness, and immorality, which formed the wall between Israel and the Gentiles, can be done away. They can now have “forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among those who are made holy by their faith” in Jesus.36
Scholars over the last generation have wrestled with the question of whether the focus of Paul’s gospel was either personal forgiveness or the inclusion of the Gentiles. This verse, true to what Paul says in every letter from Galatians right through to Romans, indicates that it is both—and that the two are mutually defining. Since the pagan powers had been defeated, like Pharaoh at the Exodus, all people were free to worship the One God. Since the defeat of the powers had been accomplished by Jesus’s death, through which sins were forgiven (the sins that kept humans enslaved to the powers in the first place), the barrier to Gentile inclusion in a new “sanctified” people had gone. “Forgiveness of sins” thus entails “Gentile inclusion,” and Gentile inclusion happens precisely because of “forgiveness of sins.” This is central to Paul’s understanding of the gospel from the Damascus Road experience on, for the rest of his life. He would say that it was the primary reason behind any “success” his movement would have.
For the moment, of course, Paul knew how unpopular this was bound to be and how unwelcome it had been in practice. The idea that Gentiles could repent and become true worshippers of the One God—but without becoming Jews by being circumcised, a point implicit here but perhaps wisely left unsaid—was the main reason why he was so often opposed out in the Diaspora. It was, in particular, the reason why the mob went after him in the Temple two years before, setting off the sequence of events that finally brought him face-to-face with Herod Agrippa.
But Paul stood firm. All he was doing was expounding Moses and the prophets. It was they who had said—and if Paul got the chance, he would eagerly give Agrippa chapter and verse—two things in particular. First, the Messiah “would be the first to rise from the dead.”37 There is Paul’s theology of the two-stage resurrection, as in 1 Corinthians 15, in a nutshell, in which the Messiah’s own resurrection inaugurates a new period of history and the resurrection of all his people follows later. Second, the Messiah “would proclaim light to the people and to the nations.”38
There may be a distant echo here, in Luke’s mind at least, of the song of Simeon, right back at the start of Luke’s Gospel, in which Simeon calls Jesus “a light for revelation to the nations, and glory for your people Israel.”39 But the more important echo is Isaiah 49, the text which meant so much for Paul: the Lord’s servant will not only “raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel”; God will give him “as a light to the nations, that [God’s] salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”40 This is a particularly appropriate passage for Paul to have in mind as he stands before Agrippa, since the next verse goes on:
Thus says the LORD,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
the slave of rulers,
“Kings shall see and stand up,
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,
because of the LORD, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, wh
o has chosen you.” 41
This too had its obvious resonances in Paul’s reflection on his ministry in Romans, written not long before. He quotes the end of Isaiah 52:15:
People who hadn’t been told about him will see;
People who hadn’t heard will understand.42
But the half verse immediately before declares:
So shall he startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him.
Standing there before Caesar’s representative, on the one hand, and the current “king of the Jews,” on the other, Paul of all people would have been alive to a sense of scripture coming true, even though the listening nobility couldn’t or wouldn’t see it.
Caesar’s representative, in particular, had no intention of having his mouth shut by Paul’s message. Those who know Paul will see that this speech, even in the compressed form Luke provides, presents a clearly thought out, scripturally resourced, and coherent worldview. To Festus, however, it appeared simply a jumble of strange ideas. Paul had always known that his message would be scandalous to Jews and madness to Gentiles. He was challenging Agrippa to look beyond the scandal, and he must have known that Festus would hear nothing but madness. Right on cue, Festus responds.
“Paul,” he roars out at the top of his voice, “you’re mad! All this learning of yours has driven you crazy!”43 This is simply one more instance of what had happened in Athens, of what Paul remembered from Corinth and elsewhere. But Paul, calmly informing Festus that he is not at all mad, uses the moment to appeal directly to Agrippa. The king knows about Jesus and his followers—“After all, these things didn’t happen in a corner.” So Paul puts him on the spot: “Do you believe the prophets, King Agrippa? I know you believe them.”44
This is a clever move. Agrippa, eager to retain such popularity as he has with the Jewish people, is not going to say he doesn’t believe the prophets. But he sees very well what the next move would be: “You reckon you’re going to make me a Christian, then, and pretty quick, too, by the sound of it!”45 Whether that was intended as a sneer or as a friendly comment—since Agrippa must have realized, as Festus did not, the deep underlying coherence of all that Paul had said, granted his starting point in the revelation of the resurrected Jesus—Paul responds calmly. It is the last time we see the apostle face-to-face with high authority, and, true to form, he respects the office and appeals to the man: “I pray to God that not only you but also all who hear me today will become just as I am”—and then, with a smile and a gesture to the visible signs of his own status—“apart, of course, from these chains.”46
The royal and official parties get up to leave. They are seen shaking their heads and commenting that this man doesn’t deserve either to die or to be tied up. He could, in fact, have been set free, if only he hadn’t gone and appealed to Caesar. Luke is aware of the multiple ironies here. If Paul hadn’t appealed to Caesar, Festus would have sent him for trial in Jerusalem, and who knows what might have happened then. Because he had appealed, putting Festus in the position of needing to write an official report on the case (and he still doesn’t seem to know what he’s going to say), Festus has brought in Agrippa to hear Paul, giving Paul the opportunity to fulfill what Isaiah had said. And the appeal, though it will send Paul to Rome in chains, will at least send him to Rome. He will stand before the ultimate earthly king, and he will do so as a helpless prisoner. When he is weak, then he will be strong.
Part Three
The Sea, the Sea
Caesarea to Rome
14
From Caesarea to Rome—and Beyond?
THE REALLY STRANGE thing about Paul’s voyage to Rome is the way in which Paul himself appears to take charge. He is a prisoner under guard. He is neither the ship’s owner nor its captain. He is of course a seasoned traveler and, according to 2 Corinthians 11, has already been shipwrecked three times, once ending up adrift at sea for a night and a day. But that hardly justifies, one would think, his giving advice and instructions, as he does repeatedly throughout the voyage. I think Luke intended this to be a positive portrait of Paul. That is not how it strikes me. He comes across as bossy.
Though Paul had sailed the Mediterranean and the Aegean often enough, he was still the heir to a Jewish tradition in which the sea represented the dark forces of chaos, which had been overcome by God’s good creation, as well as the equally dark force that had threatened the children of Israel before the Red Sea had opened up to let them through. Occasional psalms such as Psalm 93 invoked the same idea. In the book of Daniel, one of the most popular books in the Jewish world of Paul’s day, the “monsters,” representing the wicked pagan empires, come up out of the sea.1 The sea was the symbol of chaos, the source of danger, the untamable power that might at any moment strike back against the One God and his purposes in creation and new creation. Paul treated it warily, planning journeys so that he did not have to travel during winter.2 If there were dangers on the land—plots, brigands, whatever—one might choose to go by sea instead. But that was always a calculated risk.
Luke has constructed Acts in such a way that chapter 27, the great voyage and shipwreck, functions as a kind of parallel to the climax of his Gospel, which is obviously the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. That had been the moment when “the power of darkness” did its worst.3 This, now, is the moment when Paul has to face the worst that the powers can throw at him before he can arrive in Rome to announce Jesus as Lord. His rescue and his arrival in Rome thus have the character of “salvation,” a major theme of the chapter; in fact, Greek words related to “saving” occur seven times in quick succession.4 Luke seems to view the whole episode as a kind of dramatic enactment of the spiritual battle Paul described in Ephesians 6. It is always risky to jump too quickly to the view that Luke and Paul, being close friends and travel companions, must have held the same views on all subjects, but on this point I think they would have been close. Nor will Luke have ignored the fact that the shipwreck, with the entire ship’s company in danger of drowning, was like a dramatic though distorted version of the crossing of the Red Sea—a Passover moment, a baptismal image in itself.
Paul was fortunate in the particular officer who was put in charge of him. Julius, a centurion from the imperial cohort, arranged for a ship from Caesarea up the coast to Sidon, where he let Paul visit his friends. He had already realized that this strange prisoner was quite happy to be taken to Rome and was not going to run away. They then sailed around the northeast Mediterranean to Myra on the coast of Lycia. That was the destination of their original vessel, so they found another ship, this time on its way from Alexandria to Italy. There were, Luke tells us later, 276 persons on board, of whom a significant number would have been slaves. Plenty of people wanted to get to Rome. One can only imagine the diversity of human life cooped up in the small space. If there was little privacy in ancient city life, there was none at all on a crowded ship.
It was late in the year for such a voyage. Sailing in the Mediterranean was generally reckoned in antiquity to be dangerous after the middle of September and more or less impossible from November through to February or March. Rome, however, needed a regular and plentiful supply of grain from Egypt, and Claudius had taken special measures to encourage the shipments to continue for as much of the year as possible. It looks as though the ship owner in this case was one of those prepared to take risks in the hope of a bigger profit.
The early part of the voyage was slower than expected. When they finally made it as far as Crete, it was already well into October, getting into the dangerous period. (Luke mentions that this was after the Day of Atonement, which in AD 59 fell on October 5.) They made landfall at Fair Havens, a small fishing settlement on the south side of Crete, a few miles from the town of Lasea. By common consent this was not a good place to spend the winter. The harbor was not secure against storms, and the town itself was too far back from the port to be easily accessible for those who would need to stay on board to guard the ship. So they wanted to
press on, knowing that much better accommodation would be available at Phoenix, about fifty miles farther along the coast.
This is the point where Paul—the prisoner!—gave his advice. This is not as unlikely as some might suppose. Paul was a Roman citizen who had not even been formally charged, far less found guilty of any offense. Since he had a small retinue of friends traveling with him and was obviously a man of integrity and intelligence, he must have commanded respect. There is plenty of evidence, anyway, for decisions about travel in such circumstances being made after discussion among interested parties. He warned that the voyage would be nothing but trouble; heavy losses would be likely, not only to the cargo and the ship itself, but quite possibly to human life. This was actually a reasonable assessment. But the centurion, who as the imperial representative seems to have taken ultimate charge over the head of the ship’s captain and owner, took their advice instead. They had their vested interests to consider, and they seem to have thought it was worth the risk.
