 In the account of St. Paul's voyage from Jerusalem to Rome, found in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is early on shipwrecked on a certain island. I'll quote the relevant passage from the King James Version. This is Acts 28, 1 and 2. And when they escaped, that is the shipwreck, then they knew that the island was called Melita, and the barbarous people showed us no little kindness. For they kindled a fire and received us all because of the present rain and because of the cold. It's interesting to note that in the three months that Paul spends among the islanders, he does not appear to evangelize to them. And that, despite the fact that he has spent his whole career since his conversion, proselytizing across the Mediterranean. So I think there are three possibilities to explain Paul's behavior. First, the barbarous islanders are somehow subhuman and do not merit salvation. Second, he cannot communicate with them because they don't know Greek or Latin. And third, they are for some reason not in need of redemption or salvation. So the first theory is not a nice thing to think of St. Paul, who in general is happy to cavort with slaves and social outcasts. The second proposal would mean that Paul lacked the gift of tongues, which does not seem very credible, at least sort of theologically speaking. And also he does stay with these people for three months. So even if he lacked the gift of tongues, he could probably learn their language in that time. So I think it's the third proposal that should be our working hypothesis. As for why these simple islanders may not need salvation, if we keep in mind the close parallel between acts and the classical epics such as the Aeneid or the Odyssey, I think the essay Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment in the dialectic of enlightenment by Adorno and Horkheimer can point us in the right direction. The initial group that Odysseus encounters in his wanderings, also after a shipwreck, are the lotus eaters. Eating the lotus comes with a curse. Now quoting from Adorno and Horkheimer, the curse condemns them, that's the sailors of Odysseus, to nothing worse than a primal state exempt from labor and struggle in the fertile land. Now quoting the epic, as soon as each had eaten the honeyed fruit of the plant, all thoughts of reporting to us or escaping were banished from his mind. All that he now wished for was to stay where they were with the lotus eaters, to browse on the lotus and to forget that they had a home to return to. Now returning to Adorno and Horkheimer, perhaps the temptation ascribed to it is no other than that of regression to a stage of gathering the fruits of the earth and the sea, older than agriculture, cattle rearing or even hunting, in short than any production. Let us remember that Adam and Eve were also foragers and it was with their expulsion from the garden that they were condemned to agriculture as punishment. I propose that St. Paul does not evangelize to the islanders because as foragers they still continue to dwell in a state akin to paradise. They have not endured the consequences of the fall, specifically the burden of agriculture. This reading of the passage has some implications for the treatment of Native Americans during the arrival of the Spanish. Bartolome de las Casas, for instance, advocated nonviolent promotion of Christianity when encountering indigenous populations. But my interpretation of this passage from the Acts of the Apostles suggests that theologically it is inappropriate to attempt the conversion of hunter-gatherer societies. In fact, doing so would inadvertently lead them out of their garden and this would be the work of Satan.