Yet his origin in the North-African city of Cyrene was enough for many African-American communities to fashion a link to Simon, and an entryway to weaving both African-ness and blackness into the New Testament narrative. Cyrene was a coastal city in modern-day Libya .
Modern scholars, following descriptions of criminals carrying crossbars by Plautus and Plutarch, often take the Gospel description as meaning Jesus , then Simon, carried only a heavy patibulum, the crossbar, to a pole, stipes, which was permanently driven into the ground at Golgotha.
Rufus (“Red”) was a first-century Christian mentioned in Mark 15:21 with his brother Alexander , whose father “Simon a Cyrenian” was compelled to help carry the cross on which the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified.
Simon’s act of carrying the cross , patibulum (crossbeam in Latin), for Jesus is the fifth or seventh of the Stations of the Cross . Some interpret the passage as indicating that Simon was chosen because he may have shown sympathy with Jesus . Mark 15:21 identifies Simon as “the father of Alexander and Rufus”.
Just before they did so, they realized that Jesus was already dead and that there was no reason to break his legs. To make sure that he was dead, a Roman soldier (named in extra-Biblical tradition as Longinus) stabbed him in the side .
The winding route from the former Antonia Fortress to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — a distance of about 600 metres (2,000 feet) — is a celebrated place of Christian pilgrimage. The current route has been established since the 18th century, replacing various earlier versions.
For them the death of Jesus was part of a divine plan to save humanity. The death and resurrection of this one man is at the very heart of the Christian faith. For Christians it is through Jesus’s death that people’s broken relationship with God is restored. This is known as the Atonement.
Golgotha , (Aramaic: “Skull,”) also called Calvary , (from Latin calva: “bald head,” or “skull”), skull-shaped hill in Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion. It is referred to in all four Gospels.
Cyrene was an ancient Greek city on the North African coast near present-day Shahhat, a town located in north-eastern Libya. The precise location of the ancient city was thirteen kilometres from the coast.
Jesus’ brothers and sisters The Gospel of Mark (6:3) and the Gospel of Matthew (13:55–56) mention James, Joseph/Joses, Judas/Jude and Simon as brothers of Jesus, the son of Mary . The same verses also mention unnamed sisters of Jesus.
INRI is generally thought of to refer to “ Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum ,” meaning “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” but apparently there’s more.
Alexander (fl. 50–65 ) was a Christian heretical teacher in Ephesus. Hymenaeus and Alexander were proponents of antinomianism, the belief that Christian morality was not required.
Rufus is a masculine given name, a surname, an Ancient Roman cognomen and a nickname (from Latin rufus , “red”).