1. And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita.

2. And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold.

3. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand.

4. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.

5. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.

6. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.

7. In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was Publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously.

8. And it came to pass, that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him.

9. So when this was done, others also, which had diseases in the island, came, and were healed:

10. Who also honoured us with many honours; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary.

11. And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux.

12. And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days.

13. And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli:

14. Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days: and so we went toward Rome.

15. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii forum, and The three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.

16. And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.

17. And it came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together: and when they were come together, he said unto them, Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the people, or customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans.

18. Who, when they had examined me, would have let me go, because there was no cause of death in me.

19. But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Caesar; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of.

20. For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.

21. And they said unto him, We neither received letters out of Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee.

22. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against.

23. And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening.

24. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.

25. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers,

6 more verses…

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

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