It will be nearly impossible to call this a Bible study.
Although it is Bible-related, we aren’t actually studying the verses of our text.
Just for fun & for a little background behind this chapter, let’s spend a few minutes on the Island of Melita.
Some of you will remember a famous movie, made in 1941, staring Humphry Bogart, as detective Sam Spade.
A couple of the co-stars were Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
The story was written by Dashiell Hammet.
What was that thing called? Ah, yes, “The Maltese Falcon.”
According to the movie,
But pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token and the fate of the Maltese Falcon is unknown unto this day.”
Here in our scripture, the ship in which Paul was a prisoner had been pushed around by a storm for 2 weeks.
Eventually, at about mid-night the ship-men determined that they were about to be driven onto some land.
When day arrived, they could discern a shore and the place where a tiny creek ran to the sea.
In that vicinity their ship ran aground and everyone on board escaped the clutches of the sea and storm.
After some of the inhabitants of the island found them, Luke was able to determine the name of island – Melita.
A few historians have confused specific people from Melita and others from Miletus.
But there really isn’t any doubt about where it was that Paul, Luke and Aristarchus were shipwrecked.
It was a tiny island just south of Sicily in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea.
I have gleaned most of tonight’s thoughts from various articles on the internet.
I hope that you find at least some of it interesting.
As a country it is made up of three islands and several additional rocks.
And as you can see on the map, they are small, with Malta being about 12 miles long and 6 miles wide.
But there are two or three wonderful, natural harbors, attracting the attention of nations for centuries.
Today the population is just under 400,000, quite a few all things considered.
In his day, Luke called them a “barbarous people,”
because they displayed great kindness to the entire company of refugees, including the prisoners.
Luke’s statement referred to nothing more than the fact that they were hard to understand.
Megaliths are the huge stones that ancient people used for building, or as symbols, or for worship.
The statues on Easter Island are megaliths.
But Malta has had a problem from the very beginning.
There are no rivers there, no fresh-water springs, and the lack of water has been a constant problem.
As a result, early farmers and other settlers couldn’t make the islands a viable place to live.
The only way to get drinking water was to collect the rain that came in the winter and save it for use in the hot, dry summers.
Today there are some modern and expensive desalination plants to meet the needs of the residents and the thousands of tourists who come there every year.
The first semi-permanent residents in Melita were the Phoenicians, followed by the Carthaginians, who used the islands as military and transportation hubs.
That was about the time when Hezekiah became King of Judah.
Then 600 years later, during the Punic Wars, Rome won Melita from Carthage, and by 218 B.C. the islands became a Roman colony.
That greatly increased with the introduction of cotton by the Muslims much later.
Because of its importance to Rome, in the first century B.C. the Maltese were given Roman citizenship, just like Paul’s hometown of Celicia.
Despite their importance and citizenship, still, the language of the island was a kind of Phoenician until the 8th century A.D.
Despite the visit of Cicero and other well-known Romans, the most important visitor to the islands during the 700 years of Roman rule was the Apostle Paul in about 60 A.D.
But then the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian, won Malta and Sicily back.
The Byzantine Empire began when the Greek church split from the Roman Catholic church and the Pope.
And although it greatly suffered, Byzantium wasn’t completely overcome by the German barbarians.
It’s interesting that despite lots of traditions about Publius becoming a Christian and a pastor,
The first historical statement of Christian churches on Malta begin about 553 AD.
And that would have made them Greek Orthodox churches.
But a lack of history doesn’t mean that there is no history and that there weren’t churches on Melita before the Byzantines.
But then in the 9th century the Muslims began sending raiding parties all over the Mediterranean.
And in 870 Malta came under Muslim control.
With the new residents came expertise on water conservation and crops which grew well in drier climates.
Americans who are not well-taught in history, may think that Islamic terror and terrorists is something new.
And if it wasn’t for the victory of Charles Martel in 732 at the Battle of Tours in Southern France, Europe might be as Islamic as Iran or Iraq is today.
And the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099.
Initially, the Muslims, or Saracens, used Malta as a base for their defense and pirate raids.
But the King of Sicily, who was a Norman at the time, attacked and overcame them,
But that was more political than actual and the non-military Muslims on Malta lived pretty much as they had before.
Throughout the days of the Crusades there were all kinds of political intrigue in and around the island.
The Normans ruled, the Germans took control, the Pope was involved, then the Saracens again.
Everything was in turmoil, until in 1282 the Sicilian parliament acclaimed Peter of Aragon the new king.
In other words Malta became a part of Spain.
The Spanish government wanted to claim it, but didn’t want to occupy it.
Part of the reason for that were the continued threats of the Saracens and the Black plague.
For a while, there was almost all human life on the Island of Malta because of those two things.
But eventually the Spanish realized that Malta was essential to stopping the Muslims.
So in 1530 the King of Spain, Charles V, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor,
gave Malta to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem for a small yearly rent.
They were sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church and sent to the Holy Land.
As time went on, they did as ordered, but they saw the need of becoming a military unit in order to protect their investments.
It was at that point that they became known as “knights.”
They eventually became a para-church, and thoroughly military religious order.
Not only did they bring tons of daddy’s money with them, but they became privateers (pirates) attacking and plundering the Muslims wherever they found them.
Eventually the Knights of Jerusalem were driven out of Palestine, so they went to the Island of Rhodes.
But the Turks drove them out of there as well.
That is when Charles V, in 1530, stepped in and offered them the Island of Malta.
The only rent that the Emperor demanded was a symbolic one – a living falcon.
It was supposed to represent one of the protective birds of prey that the Holy Roman Empire desperately needed.
The Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem ruled Malta for 268 years.
Although they took vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, just like several other Roman Catholic orders, they forgot their initial rules of incorporation.
The Grand masters of the Knights have lived like princes in luxury castles all over the world.
And if I understand correctly, they still do today.
So Malta became the property and country of a religious/military branch of the Catholic church.
At first they were not happy with their new home,
But as they became primarily soldiers and pirates, they learned to love the harbors and central location.
Alas, in 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte took the island from the Knights.
Napoleon ended the Inquisition, the use of judicial torture and privileges based on birth.
Unfortunately he also looted the island churches of all their wealth in order to finance his wars.
Ironically, the ship carrying most of the gold of Malta sank, and nobody got to use it.
And then the French refused to pay the debts and pensions of the Knights and the island went bankrupt.
Of course, Napoleon was at war with the world at the time, and one of their primary enemies was England.
With the arrival of a British fleet at Malta, the islanders rebelled and the French were driven off.
They improved on the work of the Knights and made the harbor at Valletta one of the best and more extensively fortified in Europe.
They built a dockyards, warehouses and hospitals.
They not only held the island against the French but also against the Knights who wanted it back.
After the Treaty of Paris which ended the Napoleonic wars the British established a governor on the island, but gave the Maltese a great deal of local rule.
And English became the predominant language.
Malta was again immensely important during both World Wars – due again to its central location.
In 1942 King George VI awarded the entire island the George Cross.
That cross now appears on the Maltese flag.
And ironically, the so-called “Maltese Cross” isn’t on their flag.
Then in 1974 she became a republic.
Today she has a parliamentary democracy, much like that of Canada.
Because of her proximity to Sicily, the Italians have a lot of influence on the culture of Malta,
but she is still very loyal to Britain because of the freedoms that the British gave to her.