MANY persons have been puzzled; and many have been led into a mistake, by the expression in Acts 21:1515And after those days we took up our carriages, and went up to Jerusalem. (Acts 21:15): “We took up our carriages, and went up to Jerusalem.” But the matter is very plain when it is understood. The meaning is quite likely to be misapprehended, unless the reader is well acquainted with the changes which have taken place in the English language since the Bible was translated. Probably nine-tenths of all who read the verse suppose, and very naturally too, that Paul and his companions were provided with such conveniences as now are known by the name of carriages. Even writers of books have fallen into the same error. Thus we read in Rae Wilson’s “Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land:”
“This, I am inclined to believe, was not the track which was taken by the Apostle Paul, when he went up to Jerusalem from the coast, as he appears to have traveled in some conveyance moved on wheels; for it is so far from being in any degree possible to draw one along, that, on the contrary, a great exertion is necessary to travelers to get forward their mules.”
The error here is a comparatively harmless and amusing one, but the same mistake has been made the foundation of serious cavil at the truth of the passage. “How is this possible,” says a modern objector, “when there is nothing but a mountain track, impassable for wheels, between Caesarea and Jerusalem?” The blunder in the former case, and the sneer in the latter, would alike have been saved, had the writers known that when the Bible was translated, “carriage” did not mean “that which carries,” but “that which is carried.” “We took up our carriages” means no more and no less than “we took up our baggage,” or, as one of the earlier translations familiarly expresses it, “we trussed up our fardels.”
There are other passages in the Bible where the word “carriage” is evidently used as synonymous with baggage. For example, “So they turned and deserted, and put the little ones, and the cattle, and the carriage before them.” Judges 23:21. “And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage.” 1 Sam. 17:2222And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage, and ran into the army, and came and saluted his brethren. (1 Samuel 17:22). David’s “carriage” consisted, as we learn from the preceding verses, of an ephah of parched corn, ten loaves of bread, and ten cheeses. Examples of a similar character may readily be cited from the historians and essayists who were contemporaneous with the translators of the Bible. North, in his translation of Plutarch, says that Spartacus withdrew an opposing army, and took all their “carriage;” and Bacon, quoting 1 Sam. 30:2424For who will hearken unto you in this matter? but as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike. (1 Samuel 30:24), speaks of those “who stayed with the carriages,” substituting the word “carriages” for “stuff,” which appears in the ordinary version.
In fact, “carriage,” “luggage,” and “baggage,” were not only formed in the same way, but were originally synonyms; baggage being that which is bagged, luggage that which is lugged, and carriage that which is carried.