Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 28:14

"where we found brethren, and were entreated to tarry with them seven days: and so we came to Rome." — Acts 28:14 (ASV)

Where we found brethren.—The fact is significant, showing, in the absence of any distinct record, the extent to which the new society had been silently spreading. We can only conjecture who had been the agents in preaching the gospel there, but a city like Puteoli, which was en rapport with both Alexandria and Rome, may have received it from either.

One or two coincidences, however, tend to the former rather than the latter conclusion. We find in Hebrews 10:24 a salutation sent from “those of (or, better, from) Italy.” This would not be a natural way of speaking of Christians of Rome, and we are therefore led to think of some other Italian Church.

The only such Church, however, of which we read in the New Testament is this of Puteoli, and we naturally infer that the writer of that Epistle refers to it. But the writer, in the judgment of many critics (see Introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews), was none other than Apollos, the eloquent Alexandrian Jew of Acts 18:24. Some have even been led to think that the Epistle was addressed to the Hebrew disciples of the Therapeutae, or ascetic class, in the Delta of the Nile.

All these facts tend to the conclusion that there was a connection of some kind between Alexandria and some Italian Church. The theory that this Church was at Puteoli, though not proven, at least combines and explains all the phenomena.

We find from Josephus (Ant. xvii. 12, § 1) that there was a considerable Jewish element in the population of Puteoli. Indeed, they had spread themselves through the greater part of Italy, and the remains of a Jewish cemetery have been found even near Perugia.

Were desired to stay with them seven days.—As before at Troas (Acts 20:6) and Tyre (Acts 21:4), so here, we can scarcely fail to connect the duration of St. Paul’s stay at Puteoli with the wish of the Church there, that he should be with them on one, or perhaps two Sundays, so that he might break bread with them, and that they might profit by his teaching. The kindness of the centurion is seen once more in the permission that made compliance with the request possible.

And so we went toward Rome.—The journey would lead them through Cumae and Liternum to Sinuessa, a distance of thirty-three miles from Puteoli. Here they would come upon the great Appian Road, which ran from Rome to Brundusium, the modern Brindisi. The stages from Sinuessa would probably be Minturnae, Formiae, Fundi, and Terracina, making a total distance of fifty-seven miles.

At this point, they would have to choose between two modes of travel: taking the circuitous road around the Pontine Marshes or going by the more direct line of the canal. Both routes met at Appii Forum, eighteen miles from Terracina.

For us, nearly every stage of the journey is connected with some historical or legendary fact in classical antiquity. We think of the great Appius Claudius, the censor from whom the Via and the Forum took their names; of the passage in the overcrowded canal track-boat, with its brawling sailors; and of the scoundrel innkeepers whom Horace immortalized in the narrative of his journey to Brundusium (Sat. i. 5).

All this, we may believe, was for the Apostle as though it had not been. Past associations and the incidents of travel, all were for him swallowed up in the thought that he was now on the point of reaching, after long delays, the goal after which he had been striving for so many years (Acts 19:21; Romans 15:23).