Who was Simon of Cyrene?

The short answer

Simon came from Cyrene, a city in North Africa, and was coming into Jerusalem from the country when the soldiers stopped him. They forced him to carry Jesus’s cross. Mark gives the names of his sons, Alexander and Rufus.

What the record says

They compelled one passing by, coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with them that he might bear his cross.

Mark 15:21

Luke says they “laid the cross on him to carry it after Jesus” (Luke 23:26). Matthew tells it the same way (Matthew 27:32). John doesn’t mention Simon. He says Jesus went out “bearing his cross” (John 19:17).

Cyrene was a city on the coast of North Africa, in what is now Libya, and many Jews lived there. Mark is the only one who names Simon’s sons, which may mean his first readers knew them. Nothing more is told about Simon.

How Third Day tells it

Third Day is a novel. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. In chapter eighteen, “The Hill,” Yeshua falls under the crosspiece just past the Damascus gate. The centurion points to a man from Cyrene coming in from the country with feast bread and his two sons. Simon hands the bread to his older boy and tells the younger to stay with his brother. The soldiers push the beam onto his shoulders. Yeshua gets to his feet without the weight, and the two men look at one another across the rope. At the hill the centurion tells Simon to go. He moves his sons clear of the road and comes back to stand at the edge. When the hammer starts, he turns both boys away. The younger one twists back to look.

“He carried it,” the boy said. Simon tightened his hold. “I carried wood.”

He stays through the dust storm with both sons in the shelter of a rock, and takes them down toward the city before the last hour.