With Paul at Sea

What Jesus began on and around the Sea of Galilee, Paul continued on and around the Mediterranean Sea. With Acts as the stage, the biblical narrative shifts from land to sea. Paul is the central actor in this part of the drama. Luke, the playwright, traveling with Paul on portions of his journeys, was deeply impressed by Paul's challenges and his creative engagement with both the pagans and the Jews living in the Roman Empire. In With Paul at Sea, Linford Stutzman, himself an accomplished sailor, relates key highlights of his personal experience of sailing Paul's voyages two thousand years later. Including examples of discoveries in the cities and harbors of Acts, combined with historical, archeological, and biblical evidence, Stutzman demonstrates the contribution and relevance of Paul for Christians in the twenty-first century. Portraying the modern world as a sea, the church as a ship, and a life of faith as sailing, With Paul at Sea is an invitation for today's Christians to travel with Paul. ""Professor Stutzman's well-placed analysis of the seaward aspects of the Jesus movement in the first century . . . opens new horizons for serious biblical and cultural studies. This is a highly creative work, one that stems from years of personal interaction with the landscapes and seascapes of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. As a result, it offers a real contribution to our understanding of the living context of the emergent church, together with rich and provocative insights into the role of the church amidst a pagan world today."" --Paul H. Wright President of Jerusalem University College / Institute of Holy Land Studies ""A welcome follow-up to Sailing Acts, Stutzman dares to take the New Testament text out of the ivy towers of academia and put it to work on the deck of a boat. . . . Stutzman weaves profound insights about the kingdom of God and the globalized church along with what Paul might have felt as his ship sat becalmed at Troygyllium or sliced through the troughs of a storm. The net effect of reading this volume is to want to sign up for the author's next trip sailing on the Mediterranean."" --Mark Wilson Director of the Asia Minor Research Center, Visiting Professor of Early Christianity Regent University ""One of the major problems in NT studies these days is the failure to take seriously the possible historical substance of the Gospels and Acts. Linford Stutzman . . . shows at some length that Luke's account . . . of Paul's famous sea journey and shipwreck has all the marks of an authentic eyewitness account, right down to details about winds, distances, harbors and more. Highly recommended."" --Ben Witherington III Amos Professor for Doctoral Studies Asbury Theological Seminary Linford Stutzman is Professor of Culture and Missions at Eastern Mennonite University and director of the Biblical Lands Educational Seminars and Service of Eastern Mennonite Seminary. For the past ten years he and his wife have lead the university's semester study program in the Middle East. He is the author of With Jesus in the World (1992) and Sailing Acts (2006).