What Does Acts 27:12 Mean?

(12) **And because the haven was not commodious to winter in . . .**—The anchorage in the Fair Havens, while it gave immediate shelter from the north-west gales, was open to those from other points of the compass, and it was therefore decided by the majority (there would seem to have been something like a vote taken on the question) to press on and face the immediate risk for the sake of the more permanent advantages. **Phenice . . . which is an haven of Crete, and lieth toward the south west and north west.**—The precise meaning of the phrase is that the harbour looked, as we say, *down* these winds, in the direction *to* which they blew—i.e., that it faced the north-east and south-east, the words used being the names, not of points of the compass, but of the winds which blew from them. The harbour so described has been identified with the modern *Lutro, *on the east of the promontory of *Kavo Muros, *which looks eastward, and so corresponds to the interpretation just given of the words that describe it. The harbour is named by Ptolemy (iii. 17) as Phoenikous, and a city named Phoenix lay a few miles inland. It is still used as a harbour by Greek pirates, and was marked as such in the French admiralty charts of 1738; but, owing to the silting up of the sand, has become unsuitable for larger vessels. An inscription of the time of Nerva, of the nature of a votive tablet to Jupiter and Serapis, found near the spot, records the fact that it was erected by Epictetus, the *tabularius, *or agent, of the fleet to which the ship belonged, with the assistance of Dionysius of Alexandria, the pilot (the same word as that which St. Luke uses) of a ship which had as its sign (the same word as in Acts 28:4) the Isopharia. It is a natural inference from this that the Alexandrian ship (we note the Egyptian element in the dedication to Serapis, and possibly in the connection of the sign with the Pharos, or lighthouse of Alexandria) had anchored, and possibly wintered, at Phœnice, and that the tablet was a thank-offering for its preservation. (See Alford, *Prolegomena.*)