T(r)oy's Marbles
cyrene's pioneers (2nd part)
Where is Cyrene, anyway?
I got out my Bible atlas. (I know, I know, I’m a nerd. But I had to settle once and for all just where Cyrene was located!) On page 20, I found a map of “The Empire of Alexander”. This proved to be a help. On the north coast of Egypt is Alexandria. Travel roughly 500 miles west along the African shore and you come to Cyrene in Libya. It is African, after all!
Okay, that’s settled. But, that poses another difficulty: If that is true, why is Simon portrayed as Jewish in Gibson’s film? And, if Gibson is correct, how did Jewish people come to live in Cyrene, of all places?
Jewish people in Cyrene
I got out my Bible dictionary. (I know, I know, I’m a nerd…) First, I found a helpful one-paragraph description of Cyrene’s history: it was established by Dorian Greeks ca. 632 B.C., followed by Ptolemaic rule for a period, and then, of course, Roman rule. Its prosperity was demolished with an earthquake in 365 A.D. and it was conquered by the Arabs in 642.
Next, I discovered that Jewish people began to settle in Cyrene around 300 B.C. That answered my question! (which was: “How did Jewish people come to live in Cyrene?”) Granted, this did not tell me why they moved to Cyrene, but that is another matter. At any rate, the entry went on to state: “By New Testament times the Jewish population at Cyrene had become rather sizable.”
Now, Cyrene was roughly 800 miles from Jerusalem, so one imagines a whole new culture emerging among Cyrene’s Jews. This is, indeed, confirmed by the New Testament: it is recorded in Acts 6:9 that Cyrene’s Jews had their own synagogue in Jerusalem. That means that Cyrene’s Jews must have been different enough to justify the establishment of their own unique community within Israel’s capital. One imagines that Cyrene’s Jews fell into one of three categories:
A. Those who made annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and other such festivals.
B. Those that made the pilgrimage more infrequently.
and
C. Those who got tired of the journey so they finally decided to settle back into Israel (and, in some instances, Jerusalem--specifically speaking).
In this final category, there could be two subsets: those who still wanted to hold on to some unique features of their Cyrenian Jewry (confirmed by Acts 6:9), and those who re-entered Israel’s mainstream Jewry (if there was such a thing in Jesus’ day).
In the gospel accounts, we are not told explicitly into which category Simon fits. We do know, however, that he does fit into one of these three categories. But rather than talk about what we don’t know about Simon, let’s talk about what we do know. It is quite fascinating, I think.
Read on tomorrow to find out more...
teachings | Comments (0) | June 25, 2005