{"id":554,"date":"2019-01-25T04:42:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T04:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/?p=554"},"modified":"2019-01-25T18:09:23","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T18:09:23","slug":"melita-illyrica-and-melita-africana-the-islands-of-saint-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/melita-illyrica-and-melita-africana-the-islands-of-saint-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"M\u00e8lita Illyrica and M\u00e9lita Africana. The Islands of Saint Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>NOEL MUSCAT &#8211; SANDRO TOMA\u0160EVI\u0106, <em>M\u00e8lita Illyrica and M\u00e9lita Africana. The\nIslands of Saint Paul<\/em>, Foreword by Prof. Horatio C.R. Vella, Malta 2018,\npp. 152, ISBN 978-99957-1-395-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fr. Noel Muscat ofm is presenting a new\nbook that he wrote, together with Fr. Sandro Tom\u0161evi\u0107 ofm, a Franciscan friar\nfrom the Province of Zagreb in Croatia, regarding the traditions of the\nshipwreck of Saint Paul on the island of <em>Melite<\/em>\nin AD 60 according to the account given by Luke in Acts 27:1-28:10. The book\nconcerns the well-founded tradition of our home island of Malta, <em>M\u00e9lita Africana<\/em> as being the island\nwhere Paul was shipwrecked. It also examines an interesting theory going back\nto the Benedictine Abbot from Dubrovnik, Ignjat \u0110ur\u0111evi\u0107 who, in an erudite\nstudy published in 1730, asserted that the island of the shipwreck was <em>M\u00e9lita Illyrica<\/em>, the island of Mljet,\noff the Croatian coast of Dalmatia. This theory was opposed by the Maltese\nhistorian Giovanni Antonio Ciantar in 1738. The book examines the two theories,\nwith the aim of presenting a historical analysis of the traditional places of\nthe shipwreck and the cult of Saint Paul on both Malta and Mljet. It was born\nout of a close collaboration between fr. Noel and Fr. Sandro, who accompanied\nFr. Noel twice to Mljet and who also came to visit Malta. Fr. Sandro was one of\nFr. Noel\u2019s seminarians at Saint Saviour\u2019s in Jerusalem between 2010 and 2013.\nThe book has a foreword by Professor Horatio C.R. Vella, who is also a local\nexpert on classical history and literature. Fr. Sandro also collaborated with\nsome photos of Mljet, which form part of the illustrations at the end of the\nbook. The book contains a select bibliography on the subject for further study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Professor Vella has this to say regarding\nthe book in the foreword: \u201cThe importance of Fr. Noel Muscat\u2019s work is to be\nseen as a review of a controversy which in the past was passionate, but today\nit is cool and free from prejudice. Its importance is increased by the fact\nthat the author of this work has been on both sites which claim St. Paul\u2019s\nshipwreck.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moreover, as the authors state on the back\ncover: \u201cThis is no scholarly work of Biblical exegesis or historical erudition.\nIt is simply the work of two Franciscan brothers who tour together their\nrespective countries; the lush green forests of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia\nand the barren sun-drenched rocky cliffs of Malta, set against the deep blue of\nthe Adriatic and Mediterranean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those who have never heard of Mljet,\nthis book could provide some interesting insights, besides strengthening the\nuniversally held tradition of Malta as being the actual site of the shipwreck\nof the Apostle of the Gentiles. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NOEL MUSCAT &#8211; SANDRO TOMA\u0160EVI\u0106, M\u00e8lita Illyrica and M\u00e9lita Africana. The Islands of Saint Paul, Foreword by Prof. Horatio C.R. Vella, Malta 2018, pp. 152,&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ahbarijiet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/F_NoelBook.jpg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paH0LY-8W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofm.mt\/ofmmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}