J.J. Blunt's Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences

AN ARGUMENT FOR THE VERACITY OF THE HOLY BIBLE

Introduction

Part One:
The Books of Moses

Part Two:
The Historical Scriptures

Part Three:
The Prophetical Scripture

Part Four:
The Gospels and Acts

Appendix:
The Gospels, Acts
and Josephus

XIX. SIMON, A CYRENIAN, WHO BORE THE CROSS

Mark 15:21.—“And they compel one Simon, a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.”

Clement of Alexandria, who lived about the end of the second century, declares, that Mark wrote this Gospel on St. Peter’s authority at Rome. Jerome, who lived in the fourth century, says, that Mark, the disciple and interpreter of St. Peter, being requested by his brethren at Rome, wrote a short Gospel.

Now this circumstance may account for his designating Simon as the father of Rufus at least; for we find that a disciple of that name, and of considerable note, was resident at Rome, when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans. “Salute Rufus, ” says he, “chosen in the Lord, ” 16:13. Thus, by mentioning a man living upon the spot where he was writing, and amongst the people whom he addressed, Mark was giving a reference for the truth of his narrative, which must have been accessible and satisfactory to all; since Rufus could not have failed knowing the particulars of the Crucifixion (the great event to which the Christians looked), when his father had been so intimately concerned in it as to have been the reluctant bearer of the cross.

Of course, the force of this argument depends on the identity of the Rufus of St. Mark and the Rufus of St. Paul, which I have no means of proving [See Michaelis, vol. iii. p. 213.] ; but admitting it to be probable that they were the same persons (which, I think, may be admitted, for St. Paul, we see, expressly speaks of a distinguished disciple of the name of Rufus at Rome, and St. Mark, writing for the Romans, mentions Rufus, the son of Simon, as well known to them)—admitting this, the coincidence is striking, and serves to account for what otherwise seems a piece of purely gratuitous and needless information offered by St. Mark to his readers, namely, that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus; a fact omitted by the other Evangelists, and apparently turned to no advantage by himself.