St. Paul and Flavius Josephus tell extraordinarily coincidental stories. First, Josephus’s:
But when I was in the twenty-sixth year of my age, it happened that I took a voyage to Rome, and this on the occasion which I shall now describe. At the time when Felix was procurator of Judea there were certain priests of my acquaintance, and very excellent persons they were, whom on a small and trifling occasion he had put into bonds, and sent to Rome to plead their cause before Caesar. These I was desirous to procure deliverance for, and that especially because I was informed that they were not unmindful of piety towards God, even under their afflictions, but supported themselves with figs and nuts. Accordingly I came to Rome, though it were through a great number of hazards by sea; for as our ship was drowned in the Adriatic Sea, we that were in it, being about six hundred in number, swam for our lives all the night; when, upon the first appearance of the day, and upon our sight of a ship of Cyrene, I and some others, eighty in all, by God's providence, prevented the rest, and were taken up into the other ship. And when I had thus escaped, and was come to Diearchia, which the Italians call Puteoli… (Emphasis added.) (33)
Here, we see vegetarian Jewish sectarians of the John the Baptist and James the Just type, and like Josephus’s own one-time rabbi, Banus. Josephus refers to these Essene-like prisoners as eaters of “figs and nuts.”
Now let us consider Paul’s account of his own shipwreck, in the same vicinity, from the Book of Acts:
On the fourteenth night we were still being driven across the Adriatic Sea [It should be recalled that for the ancients, the “Adriatic Sea” extended well south of the Italian peninsula], when about midnight the sailors sensed they were approaching land. They took soundings and found that the water was a hundred and twenty feet deep. A short time later they took soundings again and found it was ninety feet deep. Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight. In an attempt to escape from the ship, the sailors let the lifeboat down into the sea, pretending they were going to lower some anchors from the bow. Then Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.” So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it drift away.
Just before dawn Paul urged them all to eat. “For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head.” After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat. They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves. Altogether there were 276 of us on board. When they had eaten as much as they wanted, they lightened the ship by throwing the grain into the sea.
When daylight came, they did not recognize the land, but they saw a bay with a sandy beach, where they decided to run the ship aground if they could. Cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea and at the same time untied the ropes that held the rudders. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach. But the ship struck a sandbar and ran aground. The bow stuck fast and would not move, and the stern was broken to pieces by the pounding of the surf.
The soldiers planned to kill the prisoners to prevent any of them from swimming away and escaping. But the centurion wanted to spare Paul’s life and kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. The rest were to get there on planks or on other pieces of the ship. In this way everyone reached land safely. (Emphasis added.) (34)
In contrast to Paul, Josephus’s wrecked ship carried about 600 people, more than twice the 276 on Paul’s ship. Oddly, both accounts specify the number of passengers, a detail that establishes a difference between them.
In Josephus’s case, the ship’s passengers desperately swim to another ship that takes them to Pueoli, while, after Paul’s shipwreck, they improbably swim all night and make it to the island of Malta.
In both stories, parties of Jewish prisoners are on their way to Rome to try their cases before Nero. Just as in Paul’s story, Josephus’s friends were “in bonds” for what can only be messianic beliefs that the Romans consider threatening.
Apparently, both ships full of suspected Jewish rebels took on water in the Adriatic Sea and sank, forcing their passengers to swim for their lives only to be miraculously saved on their way to judgment before Caesar in Rome.
In one of these shipwreck stories, the dietary habits of the prisoners are mentioned; in the other, Paul urges them to eat bread and almost performs a Christian Communion or Mass while feeding them.
Both shipwrecks happen at night and end at dawn. And in both, all the passengers are miraculously saved.
Could these events, like other dubiously duplicated people and events we have already seen, be one and the same?
The Book of Acts says that Paul was sent to Rome by the order of the Judean governor Festus, who governed between 60-62 CE. Josephus says that he was about 26 years old when he went to Rome, and this would place his voyage in the year 63 CE, which would take the event into the next governorship of Albinus.
However, Josephus mentions that the prisoners he was accompanying to Rome as their advocate had been arrested under the governorship of Felix, who governed from 52-60 CE, just as the Book of Acts says that Paul was first arrested by Felix and kept under guard until the time of Festus, who then ordered him sent to Rome. (35) While Festus ordered Paul sent to Rome, however, the voyage itself might well have not occurred until early in Albinus’s governorship, around 63 CE—the same year of Josephus’s voyage.
Most Christians today place Paul’s arrival in Rome in the year 60 CE, but Christian tradition has repeatedly associated the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul with the Great Fire of Rome (a tradition famously included in the historical novel Quo Vadis? by Henryk Sienkiewicz). (36) If this tradition is correct, then Paul could not have died until 64 CE, a date consistent with his arrival the previous year—the same year that Josephus arrived in Rome via shipwreck.
None of this suggests that either shipwreck story is historical. A story about either man surviving a “shipwreck” on their “way to Rome” is somewhat fantastic and may be allegorical however common real shipwrecks might have been on the ancient Mediterranean Sea. What’s interesting is that Josephus’s account can be correlated so closely in both time and metaphor with Paul’s story in Acts. (37)
About the same time as these shipwrecks, James the Just had been assassinated on the steps of the Temple, a treachery that had provoked a massive reaction among the Jews and may have caused delegations from both sides of the dispute to be sent to Rome for adjudication. Both Josephus, as a young priest representing Jewish prisoners, and Paul, James’s most bitter Jewish rival, could well have been among them. James’s shocking murder in Jerusalem occurred in 62 CE—precisely during the interval between the governorships of Festus and Albinus, according to Josephus. (We shall consider Paul’s possible role in the death of James shortly.)
It is noteworthy that when Josephus was composing his possibly metaphorical and certainly miraculous tale of Jewish rebels swimming from a lost ship to salvation in Rome, Titus had just put into circulation millions of coins with his dolphin-and-anchor motif and adorned public works with images like this: