(February 7, 2015 at 6:24 am)Newtonscat Wrote: ... and his two sons: Alexander and Rufus.
There was a major Jewish uprising in Cyrene in 116 ad which was suppressed by the Romans. Then came the Simon bar Kochba led uprising in 131 ad. Simon was heralded as the Messiah by some of his followers. After Simon's death his son Rufus carried on resisting the Romans for a couple of years.
Simon (of Cyrene) "carried Jesus' cross".
The earliest authenticated references to Christians is found in a Jewish text written about 137 ad.
My thoughts are that someone used the tactic of commenting on current events by writing an historical novel ... set a 100 years earlier.
The theory is that Simon of Cyrene was a black guy from North Africa who was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Of course he could have been of any ethnicity but he's normally depicted as a black guy.
[url=http://breakfastwithian.blogspot.com/2012/03/stations-of-cross-simon-of-cyrene.html]
Cyrene was on the Libyan coast east of Benghazi.
http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrene,_Libya
