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| St. Simon the Zealot's window. |
In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Simon the Zealot's family name is Kananaios, or the Cananaean. Many think this means he was from Canaan, but actually "Kananaios" is the Greek transliteration of an Aramaic word, qan' anaya, meaning "the Zealot," the title given him by Luke in his Gospel and in Acts.
It is uncertain whether he was one of the group of Zealots, the Jewish nationalistic party before AD 70. The name may simply be an attempt to distinguish him from Simon Peter. Nothing further is known about him from the New Testament. He supposedly preached the Gospel in Egypt and then joined the Apostle St. Judas (Thaddaeus) in Persia, where, according to the apocryphal Acts of Simon and Judas, he was martyred by being cut in half with a saw (longitudinally, or from head to groin). However, according to St. Basil the Great, the 4th-century Cappadocian priest, Simon died peacefully at Edessa.
A fish and a book are an odd assortment as means of identification. But since Simon and St. Jude were a proslytizing team (they roamed throughout Egypt preaching the Good News), a book is not such an odd symbol. The fish? Simon had a reputation as a great fisher of men. Okay?
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