<p>27:37 <em>And in all we were two hundred and seventy six persons on the ship</em>- This may be a reference to some taking of an inventory of all on ship, so that they could work out who if any had perished once they got to land. Such a head count would have been the responsible thing to do knowing that they were soon going to have to issue an &quot;abandon ship&quot; order. But it could be argued that this was a lack of full faith in the Lord's word of salvation which Paul had shared with them.</p><p>The significance of 276 isn't immediately apparent. It is a triangular number, triangle of 23. And many of the numbers in the New Testament are also triangle numbers. But I have constantly drawn attention to the fact that this is a parable of salvation, and those in the ship represent the redeemed. I am therefore inclined to go with the alternative reading of 70 provided by the Western Text; for 70 is the number of the Gentile nations in Gen. 10 and the number of bullocks offered for the ingathering ritual. Joseph A. Fitzmyer explains: &quot;The Western Text, MS B, the Sahidic version, and Epiphanius 310-403 read rather: &ldquo;we were about seventy persons.&rdquo; This Western Text reading seems to have risen from a dittography of the <i>omega</i> on the dative <i>ploio</i>, &ldquo;ship,&rdquo; after which the cipher for 76 was written so that it was combined with <i>s</i> (= <i>diakosiai</i>, &ldquo;two hundred&rdquo;) and taken as the adverb <i>hos</i>. Other readings: MS A reads &ldquo;275,&rdquo; and MS 69, &ldquo;270.&rdquo; (<i>The Acts of the Apostles (Anchor Bible)</i>, p. 779). This also solves the problem of such a large number of people on the boat, which was carrying grain rather than masses of passengers. 70 people is a more realistic number of people for Paul to address and break bread on a deck in the midst of a storm. For they &quot;all&quot; heard him. There would have been logistical problems for him to simultaneously address 276.</p>