Posted on 04/01/2011 9:27:23 AM PDT by Palter
Even long before the times of Jesus and the Apostle Paul, Malta was the rocky knob at the western edge of the Roman Empire, the place where the leftovers of the Mediterranean Sea washed up and dug in.
Prehistoric worshipers left mysterious stone structures. Phoenician traders planted their alphabet and Arabic-inflected language. Greeks added new words and traditions. Sailing across the water the Romans grandly called "Mare Nostrum," "Our Sea," a rich Roman governor arrived to add a mosaic-floored villa on a wind-swept hill with a view of the island curved like a pelican's beak to catch the peoples and ideas blown from across the known world.
Malta was the site of the last battle of the Crusades and one of the most-bombed targets of World War II as the Germans unsuccessfully sought to gain a foothold there for the push into North Africa.
And Malta is the site of what John Harkins of Huntsville believes will be the last and best quest of his life.
Harkins, mild-mannered Bible-reading Church of Christ deacon, proud grandpa, Auburn-educated marine biologist who now sells software for a living, is determined to be the first person since the biblical Luke to see with his own eyes evidence of the ship that carried the Apostle Paul nearly to Rome.
Foolish?
Quite possibly, he cheerfully concedes.
"I'm quite in the minority in thinking there might be some remnant," Harkins said this week, unrolling charts of the island on his desk at work. "But I know we're going to find something, though it may not be from Paul's wreck. But there's nothing (no material) I'm looking for that hasn't been found at another site."
'No loss of life'
According to Acts 27, a chapter in Luke's history of the nascent Christian movement that reads like an adventure tale, a humongous, maybe 180-foot ship made in Alexandria and loaded with tons of grain, 276 sailors, soldiers, prisoners, passengers and, probably, scalawags, crashed into the coast at the end of a 14-day storm.
The ship broke in half, spilling everyone into the sea. Miraculously the entire crew was able to struggle to shore, where they were met by the inhabitants of the 200-mile-long island, who built them a fire.
"The natives showed us unusual kindness," Luke records with a simple sincerity in Acts 28:1.
Some things, Harkins said, never change.
Despite the manners of some American shipwreck hunters that have left a bad reputation for them on the island, Harkins has met with nothing but courtesy on the island. It may be that anyone who met him sensed immediately his sincere and deep respect for their archeological expertise.
The government of Malta places a high value on caring for and understanding the relics of the ages which God seems to have placed in their care, he said. Museums catalogue ancient weapons, structures, tools, and, of course, fragments of the shipping trade that kept them a crucial outpost of other storm-tossed vessels attempting to round the Italian boot to get to Rome.
"God put that ship there, and I figure he put it where he wants, it," Harkins said. "He gave it to the Maltese people, and frankly, he couldn't have given it to people who do more to preserve their heritage - and it's their heritage, along with the rest of us."
Documenting faith
Harkins, who grew up in Montgomery and moved to Huntsville with his family when he was in high school, can't remember a time when the story of Paul's shipwreck in Acts, along with the exciting snake bite in chapter 28, didn't fascinate him. It was one of the stories that leapt out of the dim and musty antiquity of ancient, holy stories to snap into Technicolor for him.
"The very first time I read it, it sounded so real," Harkins said. "I thought, 'Holy cow, I know this happened!' I had no doubt it was real."
Doubt is something he's hoping to help other people overcome if he finds something that confirms Luke's account.
"It could be one more thing where somebody said something didn't exist and we can say, 'Yeah. It did,'" Harkins said. "Maybe it will help someone who has lost their faith and wants to come back."
When Harkins and his partners return to Malta in May for what will be his third visit to the island, he hopes to map the sub-bottom profile of areas he's decided are likely shipwreck locations given prevailing winds and the land forms.
Among the experts he has consulted is the second-century essayist Lucian and a 19th century book by the preacher son of an East India Company merchant. But his book shelves also bulge with various doctoral dissertations on relics found underwater and other books on archaeology, sailing and diving.
Dr. Gordon Franz, an archaeologist on staff of the Associates for Biblical Research, remembers responding cautiously to Harkins' first letters to him some years ago.
"We get all kinds of crack pots who contact our office about their crazy ideas or discoveries," Franz said. "After a few exchanges, I realized this fellow knows what he is talking about, so I called him. We talked for about an hour, and he shared some nautical insights into Acts 27 which I had never considered before."
Older shipwrecks than the one Harkins seeks have, in fact, been found, Franz said. But if Harkins can find the remains of an Alexandrian grain ship, that would be a first.
"It would add to our knowledge of the grain ships and the grain trade in the Roman world," Franz said. "Finding the wreck would put the Acts account on solid historical grounds.
Finding a search
And if he finds nothing at all? Despite self-funding his search and taking time away from family and work?
It's hard to describe a calling, but Harkins tries.
"I believe we all have to search for something," Harkins said. "And one of the reasons I'm doing this is because, who else would do it? It's not important to other people who would rather search for sunken treasure.
"The most important thing is the searching, and you have to find something you think worthwhile to search for."
Cool.
The New Testament doesn't say that the snake bit St. Paul, only that it fastened itself to his arm--it isn't said that fangs were used. Perhaps they were and that's why the barbarians thought he was about to drop dead.
The island is identified as Melite (Acts 28.1). There were two islands with that name--Malta and the island now called Mljet, near Dubrovnik off the Dalmatian coast. The last geographical pointer was in 27.27 where the Adriatic is mentioned. Mljet is in the Adriatic; the sea around Malta is not generally considered part of the Adriatic Sea. Constantine Porphyrogenitus thought the shipwreck was on Mljet.
There are poisonous snakes on Mljet; I don't think there are any on Malta. I was told by a high school classmate who was born on Malta that St. Paul drove the snakes out--sort of like St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland.
Pope Benedict XVI officially endorsed Malta as the place of the shipwreck, but he didn't announce that it was an infallible statement.
It could be that this guy is looking around the wrong island.
Sounds like he should have listened to your insights. Thx for the comments, I haven’t looked at the passage in a while.
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I wish him the very best of luck on his search. I find this fascinating.
You point out the term Adriatic sea is mentioned in Acts 27:27 which is correct and today Malta is not included in that area. However, during the first century the term the Adriatic sea encompassed a much larger area than it does today. That area did include the modern island of Malta.
There are some better clues in the text, Acts 27:7 (NIV) “We made slow headway for many days and had difficulty arriving off Cnidus. When the wind did not allow us to hold our course, we sailed to the lee of Crete, opposite Salmone.” They were forced to turn away from the course that would have carried them to Mljet. This change in course eventually placed them at anchor at Fairhaven Crete, again because they could not sail north.
Another clue comes when they weighed anchor to go from Fairhaven to Phoenix. In Acts 27:14 (NIV), a wind of hurricane force, called the “northeaster,” swept down from the island. (Other versions state the wind came from the ENE). The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along.
The next course clue is provided in Acts 27:16 As we passed to the lee of a small island called Cauda, we were hardly able to make the lifeboat secure. Cauda is west of Crete.
The next clue comes in the following verse Acts 27:17 (NIV) Fearing that they would run aground on the sandbars of Syrtis. These sandbars are located west of this position.
Using these clues, we have a line that runs from their starting point (Crete) past Cauda directly heading for their biggest fear the sandbars of Syrtis. They had little control and no sails and were being driven in a westerly direction. This course could not north to Mljet.
You are also correct, there are no poisonous snakes on Malta, TODAY. There are many other island countries in the world where snakes have become extinct.
The inhabitants of the island are referred to as barbarians (28.2: barbaroi). If this was Malta, I think they would have been Punic-speakers, so speaking a language similar to Hebrew--would Luke have called that tongue "barbarian"?
Adria originally applied just to the northern part of the Adriatic but the use was later extended. I was told once that there was no evidence for it being applied as early as this to the sea around Malta, but I haven't investigated it on my own, or the significance of the "Typhonikos wind called Eurakylon" (called Euroaquilo in the Vulgate).
Admittedly on general grounds Malta looks more likely, but I don't think it is definitely settled; is there any fossil evidence that poisonous snakes were ever on the island?
Our search pattern now has the first two points Fairhaven and Cauda, and the third point is the sandbars of Syrtis, (v.17), which is their main fear. It is universal, when reading shipwreck accounts, the sequence of activities on a ship in danger always begins with and revolves around the greatest danger. In this case, the sandbars, which lie basically due west and south, the direction they are being driven and the ship is out of control. They do not give us a daily update as to their position, but they tell us clearly the first two points and what they fear the third point to be.
Yes Luke called the islanders Barbarians, as was the customs of a Greek, especially if they were not speaking Greek. However, what he called people, does not really alter the path of the wind.
The two terms you mention; Euraquilo and Euroclydon, are actually, are wind direction, and probably more accurate than is the term Northeaster. They mean a wind direction of East-North-East (ENE)direction, where the NIV translation means northeaster, which is a description of direction and a storm.
To my knowledge there has been neither Fossil (nor more recent) evidence of snakes on the island of Malta to date.
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