Simon the Zealot

Description

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Simon the Zealot (Acts 1:13, Luke 6:15) or Simon the Cananite or Simon the Cananaean (Matthew 10:4, Mark 3:18; Greek: Σίμων ὁ Κανανίτης; Coptic: ⲥⲓⲙⲱⲛ ⲡⲓ-ⲕⲁⲛⲁⲛⲉⲟⲥ; Classical Syriac: ܫܡܥܘܢ ܩܢܢܝܐ‎) was one of the most obscure among the apostles of Jesus. A few pseudepigraphical writings were connected to him, but Saint Jerome does not include him in De viris illustribus written between 392–393 AD.

The name Simon occurs in all of the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts each time there is a list of apostles, without further details:

Simon, (whom he also named Peter,) and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.

To distinguish him from Simon Peter he is called Kananaios or Kananites, depending on the manuscript (Matthew 10:4 Mark 3:18), and in the list of apostles in Luke 6:15, repeated in Acts 1:13, Zelotes, the “Zealot”. Both titles derive from the Hebrew word קנאי qanai, meaning zealous, although Jerome and others mistook the word to signify the apostle was from the town of קנה Cana, in which case his epithet would have been “Kanaios”, or even from the region of כנען Canaan.[citation needed] As such, the translation of the word as “the Cananite” or “the Canaanite” is traditional and without contemporary extra-canonic parallel.[citation needed]

Robert Eisenman has pointed out contemporary talmudic references to Zealots as kanna’im “but not really as a group — rather as avenging priests in the Temple”. Eisenman’s broader conclusions, that the zealot element in the original apostle group was disguised and overwritten to make it support the assimilative Pauline Christianity of the Gentiles, are more controversial. John P. Meier points out that the term “Zealot” is a mistranslation and in the context of the Gospels means “zealous” or “jealous” (in this case, for keeping the Law of Moses), as the Zealot movement did not exist until 30 to 40 years after the events of the Gospels. However, neither Brandon, nor Hengel support this view, both independently concluding that the revolt by Judas of Galilee, arising from the census of Quirinius in 6 AD, was the ultimate origin of the Jewish freedom movement, which developed via the “Fourth Philosophy” group into the Zealots, even by the time of Jesus. Both of these researchers suggest that “Simon Zelotes” was indeed a Zealot belonging to this movement, and perhaps that other disciples were also. However, Hengel (in particular) concluded that Jesus himself was not a zealot, as much of his teaching was actually contrary to Fourth Philosophy views.