HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Simon the Zealot is, with James the son of Alphaeus, among the most silent of the Twelve. He stands eleventh in every list — next to last, just before Judas Iscariot — and the New Testament tells us nothing of him but a single word of description: Matthew and Mark call him “the Cananaean,” Luke and Acts “the Zealot.” The two are the same epithet, not two facts: “Cananaean” is not “of Cana” nor “Canaanite” but the Aramaic qan’ana, “zealous,” which Luke simply renders into Greek as zēlōtēs. What that zeal was — membership in the revolutionary party that would later fight Rome, or a plain devotion to the Law — is the one real question the name raises, and it is weighed below. Everything else about Simon is later tradition, and the traditions do not agree: the Greek menologies send him to Egypt, North Africa, the Black Sea, even Britain; the Latin Passio and the Golden Legend send him to Persia to die with Jude the apostle; the Georgians keep his tomb in the Caucasus; and the apostle-lists cannot even keep him distinct from Simeon of Jerusalem, the Lord’s kinsman. This page is less a life of Simon than a history of what was remembered and claimed about him, set out earliest source first: the bare Gospel epithet, the mutually-dependent apostle-lists that first scattered his mission and confused his person, the Latin passion and the Golden Legend that fixed the Persian martyrdom and gave Western art its saw, and the modern scholarship that weighs the epithet and grades the travels. This is a biographical tradition-timeline: its “witnesses” are the datable sources that report on him, and the contested questions — what did “the Zealot” mean? where did he go and die? was he the same man as Simeon son of Clopas, who ruled the Jerusalem church? — are weighed on their own argument pages below rather than settled by assertion. For the shared ladder of sources and how far to trust each rung, see the apostles hub.
Related doctrines: The apostles — see also the apostles (overview) · Simon Peter · Andrew · James, son of Zebedee · John, son of Zebedee · Philip · Bartholomew · Thomas · Matthew · James, son of Alphaeus · Thaddaeus / Jude · Judas Iscariot · Matthias · Paul
The New Testament names Simon four times, always in the same place — eleventh in the third group of four, immediately before Judas Iscariot — and never otherwise. It gives him no saying, no deed, no mission, no death: only a surname that marks him off from that other Simon, Simon Peter. Matthew and Mark write “Simon the Cananaean” (ho Kananaios); Luke and Acts, in the same slot, write “Simon called Zelotes.” These are not two men nor two facts but one epithet in two languages: “Cananaean” transliterates the Aramaic qan’ana (“zealous”), and Luke translates it for Greek readers as zēlōtēs. That the word does not mean “from Cana” or “Canaanite” is settled; what the “zeal” denotes — a former insurgent of the revolutionary party, or simply a man zealous for the Law — is the one question the New Testament leaves open, and is weighed below.1
Where the Gospels give a name only, the late apostle-lists — Pseudo-Hippolytus On the Twelve Apostles, Pseudo-Dorotheus of Tyre, and their Byzantine and Latin kin — supply a mission and a death, and cannot agree on either. One strand sends Simon far into the north and west — the Black Sea coast, Egypt and North Africa, and even Britain; another keeps him in the East, in Persia or the Caucasus. Worse, the lists cannot even keep his person distinct: Pseudo-Hippolytus writes that “Simon the Zealot, the son of Clopas, who is also called Jude, became bishop of Jerusalem after James the Just, and fell asleep and was buried there at the age of 120 years” — which is not the apostle Simon at all but Simeon son of Clopas, the second bishop of Jerusalem, whom Hegesippus reports martyred under Trajan at 120. That the catalogues fuse the apostle with the bishop, and scatter his travels across three continents, is the tell: his “biography” is being assembled after the fact from names that happened to match.2
The Western Church settled on one of these strands and made it the standard story. The Latin Passio Simonis et Iudae, retold in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (c. 1260), pairs Simon with Jude/Thaddaeus, sends the two together into Persia — Simon “preached in Egypt,” Jude “in Mesopotamia,” “and from thence came they into Persia” — to confront the sorcerers Zaroes and Arphaxat and to die together in a pagan temple at Suanir, where the priests “ran upon the apostles and hewed them to death.” From this joint martyrdom the West keeps their common feast on 28 October, and Western art gave Simon a saw as the emblem of his death — from the parallel tradition, reported as far back as the Greek and Latin passions, that he was sawn asunder. The Golden Legend itself hedges even here, noting that “it is founden in divers places, of S. Simon, that he was nailed to the cross,” while “some say verily that it was not this Simon that suffered the martyrdom of the cross, but it was another.” It is late legend — a millennium and more after the events — and church memory, not history.3
Critical study leaves Simon nearly as blank as the Gospel lists found him, and turns the two live questions over to the tools that grade them. On the epithet, most now doubt that “the Zealot” can mean a card-carrying member of the revolutionary party: Josephus dates the organized Zealots to the war of 66–70, a full generation after Jesus called Simon, so the surname more likely means “zealous for the Law” — though Martin Hengel’s study of a longer-running “freedom movement” reaching back to Herod keeps the political reading alive, and the question stays genuinely open. On the travels, the verdict is harder: the mission-traditions are late, mutually contradictory, and geographically impossible to reconcile — Persia, Britain, Egypt, and the Caucasus cannot all be true — and Sean McDowell’s survey of the martyrdom accounts rates the case for any particular death of Simon among the weakest of the Twelve. What can safely be said is only this: a Simon called “the Zealot” was numbered among the apostles; everything more is either silence or a tradition the evidence cannot carry.4
The political reading takes Simon’s surname to mark him a former insurgent of the Zealot party — the nationalist movement that sought to throw off Rome — so that Jesus’ circle included a reformed revolutionary beside a tax collector who had served Rome. Against it stands a chronological objection: Josephus dates the organized “Zealots” as a named faction to the war of 66–70, decades too late, so that the epithet on the lips of Jesus can only mean “zealous” for the Law. For it stands Hengel’s case that a broader Jewish freedom movement long predated the war-years party. Strong by one discipline’s lights and weak by another’s, with no clear winner. Contested.5
The mission-traditions place Simon in mutually exclusive fields — Persia (with Jude, martyred at Suanir), Britain, Egypt and North Africa, the Black Sea, the Caucasus — and cannot be harmonized: no early or independent witness fixes any one of them, the sources that carry them are the same late catalogues that confuse Simon with Simeon of Jerusalem, and the Persian story is a paired romance built to match Jude’s. That some mission is likely is not in doubt; that we can know which is what the evidence cannot deliver. Weak.6
The identity thesis — advanced by Pseudo-Hippolytus, the Chronicon Paschale, an apocryphal apostle-Preaching, and argued by modern reference works — makes the silent apostle one and the same as Simeon son of Clopas, the Lord’s cousin who took the Jerusalem chair after James the Just and was martyred under Trajan. A family argument gives it a spine: if Alphaeus is Clopas, Simon son of Clopas would be the brother of James son of Alphaeus, explaining their juxtaposition in the lists. Against it, its support is the least reliable stratum of the record — the same catalogues that also confuse Simon’s person and scatter his travels — while the earliest good witness, Hegesippus, presents Symeon as the Lord’s cousin, chosen to succeed the apostolic leadership because a kinsman, not as one already of the Twelve. Suggestive against, but not decisive; with a real argument each way, no clear winner. Contested.7
Simon in the four lists of the Twelve, eleventh in each and next to last: “Simon the Canaanite” (Cananaean), Matthew 10:4, Mark 3:18; “Simon called Zelotes,” Luke 6:15, Acts 1:13. That “Cananaean” renders the Aramaic qan’ana (“zealous”), of which zēlōtēs is the Greek translation — and not “of Cana” or “Canaanite” — is standard: see Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Simon the Apostle” (“Both surnames have the same signification and are a translation of the Hebrew qana”). On the several Simons of the New Testament and the epithet, see the detail page. ↩
Pseudo-Hippolytus, On the Twelve Apostles 11 (ANF vol. 5, tr. S. D. F. Salmond) — “Simon the Zealot, the son of Clopas, who is also called Jude, became bishop of Jerusalem after James the Just, and fell asleep and was buried there at the age of 120 years” — a description not of the apostle but of Simeon son of Clopas, second bishop of Jerusalem, whom Hegesippus reports crucified under Trajan aged 120 (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.32). The scattered mission-fields (Egypt, North Africa, the Black Sea, Britain, Persia, the Caucasus) are surveyed in Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Simon the Apostle”. On the apostle-lists as mutually-dependent church memory, see the apostles hub; fuller treatment on the detail page. ↩
Jacobus de Voragine, the Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea, c. 1260), tr. William Caxton, life of SS. Simon and Jude — Simon in Egypt and Jude in Mesopotamia, “and from thence came they into Persia”; the sorcerers Zaroes and Arphaxat; the priests who “ran upon the apostles and hewed them to death” at Suanir; and the hedge that “it is founden in divers places, of S. Simon, that he was nailed to the cross… some say verily that it was not this Simon that suffered the martyrdom of the cross, but it was another.” The sawn-asunder death that gave Simon the saw as his emblem, and the 28 October feast: Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Simon the Apostle” (his body “was said to have been sawed to pieces”). Fuller treatment on the detail page. ↩
On the epithet, John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 3 (Doubleday, 2001), argues the organized Zealot party postdates the Gospels and that “Zealot” here means “zealous” for the Law; the longer-running “freedom movement” reading is Martin Hengel, The Zealots (Eng. tr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989). On the party’s war-time date, Josephus, The Jewish War 4.3–7 and 7.8. On grading the martyrdom-traditions, Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles (Routledge, 2015), which rates the case for Simon’s death among the weakest of the Twelve. ↩
See the argument page, Was Simon “the Zealot” a member of the revolutionary party? — assessment contested. ↩
See the argument page, Where did Simon the Zealot preach and die — Persia, Britain, or elsewhere? — assessment weak. ↩
See the argument page, Was Simon the Zealot the same man as Simeon son of Clopas, the second bishop of Jerusalem? — assessment contested. ↩