Dionysus on a Bike

Acts 18:24-28 – 8/7/2026

The opening verse from today’s New Testament reading reminded me of something I re-learned recently. Alexandria was the center of the Mediterranean world, the Greek-speaking world, for almost a thousand years. Apollos from Alexandria had been baptized by John and as today’s verse tells us “was eloquent [and] well-versed in the scriptures.” If there was anywhere someone like this that someone who knew Greek well and also knew the Hebrew scriptures would be from, it would be from Alexandria.

Today we think of the world, especially that part of the world, as divided into continents. Europe is distinct from Africa, which are both distinct from Asia Minor and the Middle East. That’s not how cultural boundaries were understood in the First Century CE. Then it was the Great Sea, “Our Sea” as the Romans called it, the Mediterranean that designated a geographical unit. The sea was what connected distant lands on all three of the continents. Alexandria was right there in the middle of it, close to Palestine and Syria, Greece, and Italy and so was the hub through which trade, knowledge, and language flowed. We do not know a ton about Apollos, but we can surmise that he was worldly, knowing something of all the cultures that made up the broader Greek-speaking world and the Roman Empire.

There is nothing especially devotional about today’s reading. There is a lesson about the distinction between the baptism of John and the baptism Jesus commanded for his followers (Apollos had John’s baptism but had not yet been baptized “in the name of Jesus). What I got out of thinking about Alexandria as the cultural hub of the Mediterranean world is that geography matters. Place matters, language matters, and culture matters. These things shaped who Apollos was, and in a very different world than his, these things shape us as well.

Revised Common Lectionary Readings for 8/7/2026:
1 Kings 18:17-19, 30-40
Acts 18:24-28
Psalm 85:8-13

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis