Superconductivity is observed in a composite of rhombohedral crystalline bismuth nanoparticles imbedded in an insulating porous opal host via electrical transport and AC magnetic susceptibility. The onset of superconductivity in this system occurs in two steps, with upper transition temperature T c,U =4.1 K and lower transition temperature of T c,L =0.7 K, which we attribute to the granular nature of the composite. The transition at T c,U is observed to split into two transitions with the application of a magnetic field, and these have upper critical fields extrapolated to T=0 K of H c2,1(0)=0.7 T and H c2,2(0)=1.0 T, corresponding to coherence lengths of ξ 1(0)=21 nm and ξ 2(0)=18 nm, respectively. We suggest that because of the lack of bulk-like states in the Bi nanoparticles due to confinement effects, superconductivity originates from surface states arising from Rashba spin-orbit scattering at the interface.