What lies behind the Gospels? What filled that black box between the ministry of Jesus and the composition of his earliest biographies, the canonical Gospels?
With respect to the later evangelists – Matthew, Luke and John – we have some very clear clues. We know that Matthew and Luke used Mark, and many now think John did too. This allows us to observe how they redacted one of their primary sources.
But when it comes to our earliest Gospel, Mark’s sources lie painfully out of reach. In the past, form-critics applied certain principles to work back to the ‘earliest form’ of the Gospel pericopae – the building blocks of the text. They were even confident they had recovered a pre-Markan passion narrative, taking us one step closer to Jesus’ life.
Since the end of the twentieth-century, however, confidence in form and source-critical projects has waned. No longer do scholars believe that, by a few simple maneuvers, they can find recover the source in original form behind the text. The sources in their original form are lost, and no level of genius can reverse this fact.1
With that said, there are moments where one does feel as though one has glimpsed behind the Gospels. While there is no fool-proof method to work out when a story goes back to an eyewitness, I do think certain stories give us a strong nod in this direction.
For me, one of those moments is the story of Simon of Cyrene, found in Mark 15. Many of us will know Simon’s story. As an extension of the Roman soldier’s mockery of Jesus, he was pressed into carrying his’ cross (v. 21).2
What is often overlooked is the detail that surrounds his character, and the way this detail supports the historicity of the event. Take the fact that Simon is described as the ‘father of Alexander of Rufus.’ As many commentators have noted, it is extremely peculiar that Alexander and Rufus should find their way into this narrative like this
For a start, it is uncommon for a figure’s name to be disambiguated by the names of their children. Typically, a person’s name is distinguished by their parents’ name, most commonly their father’s. We might think of another Simon, Simon bar Jonah. To call Simon ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’ is a rather curious move.
It might be replied that earlier in the Gospel, Mary is marked out as the mother of James and Joses (14:40). But in this case, Mary’s name, unlike Simon’s, had not already been disambiguated, and the figures of James and Joses are central to the plot. By contrast, Simon has already been distinguished by Cyrene, and Alexander and Rufus have no action in the plot. Their names seem entirely redundant.
Finally, it is rather peculiar that Alexander and Rufus are mentioned at all, simply on the ground that Mark is sparing with names. There are many characters in the Gospel who are not disambiguated at all. Why then is Simon so heavily disambiguated?
Perhaps one can contrive a symbolic explanation for Alexander and Rufus. I found one creative suggestion online that Alexander evoked the great commander and Rufus evoked the pacifist, Musonius Rufus – thus Simon birthed both War and Peace! Perhaps this explanation was dreamt up after a late night reading Tolstoy.
Conversely, the names may have been fabricated to give the account the gentle veneer of authenticity. But if verisimilitude was the goal, one would expect to find a more consistent pattern of this strategy throughout the Gospel. The reference to Simon’s sons appears like a bolt out of the blue.
For most scholars, the simplest explanation of this verse is that Alexander and Rufus were known to the audience of Mark or his source, either in person or in reputation.3 It may even be possible that the Simon’s role was known through Alexander and Rufus, so that their names served in some sense as a guarantee of the tradition.4
Can we say anything more about the sons in question? Some have gone so far to say that they can spot one of them. When Paul writes to Rome – the location traditionally associated with Mark – he mentions a Rufus (Romans 16:13). Yet this figure was likely Greek rather than Jewish, and, in any case, Rufus was a common name in antiquity.5
In my view, a more plausible and tantalising possibility is that Simon and his sons were part of the Jerusalem Church. Support for this idea comes in the surprising form of an ossuary (bone box) found in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem, where Jesus made his way to Golgotha. On its front, the ossuary reads ‘Alexander (son of) Simon’ in Greek, while on its lid is etched the Hebrew ‘Alexander the Cyrenian [קרנית].’6
Before we get ahead of ourselves, Alexander and Simon were common names in antiquity. Yet this is the only ossuary with the name 'Alexander (son of) Simon’, and the reference to Cyrene adds a further level of specificity. For several scholars –including some heavily critical of the reliability of the Gospel tradition – the evidence is highly suggestive that we have the bone-box of Mark’s very own Alexander.7
Whether or not we have Alexander’s ossuary, however, we can be confident that him and his brother were known at some point in the early Jesus movement – they were real people, and real people who may well have belonged to the Jerusalem Church. At least in seeing this much, their names afford us a glimpse behind the Gospels.
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For a full-blown critique of the notion of a pre-Markan passion narrative, see Brandon Massey, “The Birth and Death of the PreMarkan Passion Narrative: A History of Form Criticism’s Most Assured Result” (PhD Dissertation, University of St Mary’s, Twickenham, 2023).
For the way in which Simon’s role is connected to the Roman triumph, see Helen K. Bond, “Paragon of discipleship? Simon of Cyrene in the Markan Passion narrative” in Matthew and Mark Across Perspectives: Essays in Honour of Stephen C. Barton and William R. Telford, eds. KA Bendoraitis & NK Gupta, LNTS 538 (Bloomsbury , London; New York), 18-35.
See Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 176-77; Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching (London: T&T Clark), 126-127; Dale C. Allison Jr., Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2012), 455.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Cambridge, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 51-52.
Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary. Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 2007), 736.
There is some doubt as to what exactly קרנית means. It is variously translated as ‘the Cyreneaite', ‘the Cyrenian’ or as otherwise referring to Cyrene. Yet this doubt is mitigated by the fact that adjacent ossuaries have names more typical of Cyrene than Jerusalem. See Craig A. Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries: What Jewish Burial Practices Reveal about the Beginning of Christianity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2003), 94-96.
For example, Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, 126; Allison, Constructing Jesus, 455.
Hey could I ask you to take a look at the short article and respond to its main point about Josephus and the burial and it was the main source of that video I talk to you about the other day https://ehrmanblog.org/josephuss-clearest-claim-about-the-burial-of-crucified-victims/