J.J. Blunt's Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences

AN ARGUMENT FOR THE VERACITY OF THE HOLY BIBLE

Introduction

Part One:
The Books of Moses

Part Two:
The Historical Scriptures

Part Three:
The Prophetical Scripture

Part Four:
The Gospels and Acts

Appendix:
The Gospels, Acts
and Josephus

XXII. ALEXANDRIA AND PUTEOLI

Acts 28:11, 12, 13.—“And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux. And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days. And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli.”

Puteoli then, it should seem, was the destination of this vessel from Alexandria. Now, we may collect, from the independent testimony of the Jewish historian, that this was the port of Italy to which ships from Egypt and the Levant in those times commonly sailed. Thus, when Herod Agrippa went from Judća to Rome, for the purpose of paying his court to Tiberius, and bettering his fortune, he directed his course first to Alexandria, for the sake of visiting a friend, and then crossing the Mediterranean, he landed at Puteoli. (Antiq. xviii. 7. § 4.) Again, when Herod the Tetrarch, at the instigation of Herodias, undertook a voyage to Rome, to solicit from Caligula a higher title, which might put him upon a level with his brother-in-law, Herod Agrippa, the latter pursued him to Italy, and both of them (says Josephus) landed at Dichćarchia (Puteoli), and found Caius at Baić. (Antiq. xviii. 8. § 2.)

Take a third instance. Josephus had himself occasion, when a young man, to go to Rome. On his passage the vessel in which he sailed foundered, but a ship from Cyrene picked him up, together with eighty of his companions; “and having safely arrived (says he) at Dichćarchia, which the Italians called Puteoli, I became acquainted with Aliturus, &c.;” (Josephus’s Life, § 3.)

In the last passage there is a singular resemblance to the circumstances of St. Paul’s voyage. Josephus, though not going to Rome as a prisoner who had himself appealed from Felix to Cćsar, was going to Rome on account of two friends, whom Felix thought proper to send to Cćsar’s judgment-seat—he suffered ship wreck—he was forwarded by another vessel coming from Africa—and finally he landed at Puteoli.

the end.