Simon and the Jews of Cyrene
During the Second Temple Period, many Jews lived outside of Israel. And the city of Cyrene in Northern Africa was one of the major Jewish Diaspora centers. You may not have heard much about this city because its glory has disappeared from the pages of history, and it stands in ruins to this day. But the presence and the influence of Jews from Cyrene are reflected in several New Testament passages. Consider the famous Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross (Matt 27:32, Mark 15:21, Luke 23:26).
Many Bible readers assume that Simon was a native-born African. Therefore, the traditional depictions of Simon of Cyrene in church iconography imagine him as a dark-skinned man with traditional African features. He often looks like an Ethiopian and not very Middle Eastern. Naturally, the Bible does not tell us what he really looked like, so to be honest, all the images we have are the result of artistic imagination.
Whether Simon was dark-skinned or olive-skinned is not at all important, but he was probably not a native of Africa to begin with. History tells us that many Judeans were captured and taken into slavery under Pompey in 63 BC (Philo, Embassy to Gaius 23). They were scattered all over the Mediterranean Roman colonies, including the city of Cyrene, which the Romans occupied. So Simon was most certainly a Jew whose home was the African city of Cyrene, whether by choice or not.
Cyrene (Κυρήνη) was a city with an ancient history. Greek settlers from the Aegean island of Thera around 630 BC established it as an outpost (Herodotus, History, Book IV; Strabo, Geography, Book XVII). According to the ancient accounts, the Greeks who established this colony did so by following the instructions of the divine oracle in order to escape severe famine. The Greek colonists named their new African outpost after a nearby spring along the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity of the modern village of Shahhat in Libya. Of course, most locals in Libya look quite African, but Cyrene was a Greek city, a new colony, and it was populated by outsiders.
