Simon the Zealot. Simon the Zealot or Simon the Cananite or Simon the Cananaean 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, 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., Luke 6:14-16 To distinguish him from Simon Peter he is called Kananaios or Kananites, depending on the manuscript, 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.
As such, the translation of the word as the Cananite or the Canaanite is traditional and without contemporary extra-canonic parallel. 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.
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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, 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., Luke 6:14-16 To distinguish him from Simon Peter he is called Kananaios or Kananites, depending on the manuscript, 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.
As such, the translation of the word as the Cananite or the Canaanite is traditional and without contemporary extra-canonic parallel. 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.
Eis
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