After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. (Acts 28:11)
As Paul boards a ship for his final voyage—shipwrecked, haggard, and snakebite—Luke notes with dryness boarding on sarcasm that the boat bears the emblem of the twin gods.
The gods are Castor and Pollux. They are the twin sons of Zeus, the Dioscuri. You know them by the Zodiac sign of the Gemini twins.
To the first-century mind, these weren’t just decorations. Luke Is telling us something to pay attention to if we are to be wise.
The Brand of the Invincible
The Alexandrian grain ship was not merely a boat. It was an argument.
To the first-century mind, one of these massive vessels cutting the horizon was the ultimate assertion of Rome’s inevitability. They were the super-freighters of the ancient world, behemoths of oak and pine that carried the caloric energy of the Empire in their bellies. Egyptian grain on its way to Rome for bread and circuses.
They represented logistics. They represented the terrifying competence of a civilization that had paved the world and tamed the ocean.
In the pantheon of Greek and Roman religion, Castor and Pollux were the specific patrons of sailors. They were the sons of Zeus, the Sky Father, and they were entrusted with the power to calm the wind and the waves. They were the divine guarantors of the “Good Trip.”
Their connection to maritime safety was so deep that it was actually visible. Sailors believed that the twins manifested themselves during storms as St. Elmo’s Fire—that strange, glowing electrical discharge that sometimes dances on the mastheads of ships during high-voltage weather.
To sail under the sign of Castor and Pollux was to sail under the highest possible clearance. It was a brand name that communicated trust, dependability, and absolute security.
It is the FDIC or Blue Cross Blue Shield to the modern mind. It was a corporate-theological guarantee. This vessel has been vetted. The risks have been managed. The gods are on the payroll.
Resume of a Ship-Wrecked Saint
Consider the journey that brought Paul to this gangplank.
His journey to Rome began with a trial. He had been entangled in the legal bureaucracy of Judea, passed from Felix to Festus like a bad penny. He had played his final card—his Roman citizenship—appealing to Caesar just to escape a stoning in Jerusalem.
He was put on a ship (a different ship, one without the famous Twins) late in the season. The experts decided to risk the voyage because money was on the line. They trusted their skill. They trusted their boat.
And then the Euroclydon hit, a cyclonic hurricane that descended from the mountains of Crete and turned the Mediterranean into a mosh pit. For fourteen days, the sun and stars disappeared. The “technology” of the ship failed. The rudder was useless. The sails were torn. The hull began to leak.
The ship, of course, was destroyed. It was smashed on the sandbars of Malta. It was a total write-off. But the men survived. They washed up on the beach, shivering, wet, and vomiting salt water. And just when Paul thinks the ordeal is over, just when he is gathering sticks to build a fire and warm his frozen blood, a viper latches onto his hand.
But Paul just shakes the snake off into the fire. He doesn’t swell up. He doesn’t die. He just goes back to warming his hands.
This is the man who is now staring at the figurehead of Castor and Pollux.
The God of Trust
When Paul steps onto the ship of Castor and Pollux, he is the only free man on board. The captain is enslaved to the fear of the sea. The merchants are enslaved to the fear of losing their profit. The sailors are enslaved to the superstitions of the stars. They are all terrified that the “Twins” might fail them. But Paul is free. He has already seen the Twins fail. He has seen the ship sink. And he has survived. He knows that his life is hidden with Christ in God, and therefore, he is invincible until his work is done.
