A Kind Roman Centurion

Once Paul made an appeal for Caesar to hear his case, the Roman authorities had to send him to Rome (Acts 25:1–12). This was true even though it was clear that the Apostle had not broken any Jewish or Roman law (25:13–26:32). In today’s passage, Luke, the author of Acts, begins the historical account of Paul’s journey from Caesarea to the city of Rome.

Acts 27–28, the record of Paul’s travels to Rome to make his appeal to the emperor, is filled with details and has been recognized by many commentators as one of the most accurate descriptions of sea travel in the ancient world that we have available to us. This accuracy should not surprise us, for the book of Acts is part of God’s inerrant and infallible Word. In any case, Luke was an eyewitness of Paul’s journey and accompanied him on his travels, as we see from the use of the first-person pronoun “we” in Acts 27:1. Luke does not tell us when he joined up with Paul at Caesarea, but several commentators say that he would have been with Paul during much of his two-year imprisonment in that city (see 24:27). The journey to Rome from Caesarea most likely started in the fall of AD 59 and would take much longer than the normal five weeks because of weather conditions.

Acts 27:1–8 narrates the journey from Caesarea to the island of Crete. Most of the ships that traveled the sea in those days were cargo ships, and people who wanted to travel by boat to other cities would find ships heading in their direction and pay to ride along. Departing from Caesarea in a ship from the port of Adramyttium that was heading for Asia Minor, Paul and the company with him traveled north from Caesarea and then west along the southern coast of Asia Minor until the ship stopped in Myra on the southwest corner of Asia Minor. In Myra, they joined a ship from Alexandria that was traveling to Italy, almost certainly with a load of grain, since the Roman Empire counted on Egyptian grain to feed its citizens. (Alexandria was one of the chief cities of Egypt and a port from which Egyptian grain and goods were sent.)

Paul sailed to Rome in the custody of Julius, a centurion from the Augustan Cohort, a unit of the Roman army made up mostly of Syrians (v. 1). Julius treated Paul kindly and even let him visit his friends while they were at Sidon (v. 3). God in His providence made sure that Paul was well cared for on his journey.