In the thread about people' favourite less known Bible stories, I quoted someone noted:
viewtopic.php?t=69006Simon of Cyrene... hardly ever mentioned for some reason.
Simon of Cyrene is briefly mentioned in the three synoptic gospels, but not John's.
Matthew 27:32
Mark 15:21And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they [the Romans] compelled to bear his cross.
Luke 23:26And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.
And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.
Simon is venerated in Roman Catholic tradition and appears in the Twelve Stations of the Cross found at most of their chapels. (He is depicted in the fifth station.) The usual assumption is that he volunteered for the job, but the three gospels make it clear that he didn't necessarily do.so (see parts I have put in bold.) Some people do say he was a follower of Jesus and that is why he was chosen. Others say he converted to Christianity later. I don't think it's that clear cut myself. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is wrong on many things but gets this correct.
Does Simon represent taking on Jesus' suffering? Our suffering? Or just an unlucky victim? Was he someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
This is all the information we have from the main scriptures. Here is what we can deduce:
* The name Simon implies he was Jewish.
* He was from Cyrene or Cyrenaica , a city and region in Libya in North Africa. Because he was not local, he may have been a trader or a pilgrim to the Jerusalem Temple.
* He had two sons Alexander and Rufus. According to some traditions these two became saints. These are not very Jewish sounding names. Rufus may be addressed in Romans 16:13.
So we can surmise he was probably a Hellenised Jew from North Africa, just to the west of Egypt. This does not mean he was a black African, as many try to claim (Sidney Poitier plays him in one film), but he was probably part of the long established Jewish colonies in and around Egypt mentioned in 3 Maccabees, and judging by his son's name Alexander, he could well have been dressed more like a Greek than a local Jew. Simon would have been of Mediterranean/Levantine appearance not sub-Saharan African. Another reason to suspect he wasn't black is his son's name "Rufus" which often referred to someone who was red in the face or who had red hair (which is rare but not unknown among blacks.)
Black Simon (see above)
If Romans 16:13 refers to his son Rufus, this may mean his wife and son were or became Christian.
Pseudepigrapha
Some Pseudepigrapha such as the Gospel of Basilides, the Apocalypse of Peter and Second Treatise of the Great Seth claim that Simon himself ended up being crucified in Jesus' place. Irenaeus reports in Against Heresies that in the Gospel of Basilides:
The argument of Gnostics was that they worshipped a living Christ not a dead one. In the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter himself ends up on a cross beside Jesus in a similar incident. I do not agree with this although it is worth pointing out other odd aspects of the Crucifixion such as the thief on the cross who ends up redeemed and Barabbas (whose name means literally "Son of the Father") who ends up released.... a certain Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry his cross for him. [Jesus] It was he who was ignorantly and erroneously crucified, being transfigured by him, so that he might be thought to be Jesus. Moreover, Jesus assumed the form of Simon, and stood by laughing at them.
While these are dubious sources, the Acts of Simon and Judas states that Simon of Cyrene was martyred decades later by being cut in half with a saw.
Cyrenians
https://www.gotquestions.org/Simon-of-Cyrene.html
Many Jews from Cyrene had returned to their native Israel and were part of a community in Jerusalem called the Synagogue of the Freedmen comprising Jews from many other provinces including Alexandria (Egypt), Cilicia and Asia (Acts 6:9). Luke records men from Cyrene being among those converted at Pentecost (Acts 2:10). After the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7), believers from Cyrene were among the first to be scattered by the persecution in Jerusalem; arriving in Antioch, they preached to the Gentiles there (Acts 11:20). These believers were instrumental in the formation of the church at Antioch, where, for the first time, “the disciples were called Christians” (Acts 11:26).