Historical evidence - Simon of Cyrene
As a follow up to my story I posted last week, here's an interesting article in the July/August 2003 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review , page 51 about an archeological discovery made in 1941. ********************************** Archaeological evidence may confirm the historical reality of the Bible's Simon of Cyrene The Bible records that when Jesus was on the way to be crucified, the Roman soldiers forced a man called Simon from Cyrene to carry his cross. ( Matthew chapter 27 verse 32 , Luke chapter 23 verse 26 ). It also tells us that this Simon had sons called Alexander and Rufus ( Mark chapter 15 verse 21 ). Cyrene was the capital city of the province of Cyrenaica, which was in the eastern part of present-day Libya. In 1941, the Israeli archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik from the Hebrew University, and his assistant Nahman Avigad, discovered a rock tomb in the Kidron valley in eastern Jerusalem. (Sukenik would later become famous for acquiring the first Dead Sea Scroll...
