Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/437



HIS NAME.

The ever-recurring difficulty about the distinctive appellations of the apostles, forms the most prominent point of inquiry in the life of this person, otherwise so little known as to afford hardly a single topic for the apostolic historian. The dispute here indeed involves no question about personal identity, but merely refers to the coincidence of signification between the two different words by which he is designated in the apostolic lists, to distinguish him from the illustrious chief of the twelve, who bore the same name with him. Matthew and Mark in giving the names of the apostles,—the only occasion on which they name him,—call him "Simon the Cananite;" but Luke, in asimilar notice, mentions him as "Simon Zelotes;" and the question then arises, whether these two distinctive appellations have not a common origin. In the vernacular language of Palestine, the word from which Cananite is derived, has a meaning identical with that of the root of the Greek word Zelotes; and hence it is most rationally concluded, that the latter is a translation of the former,—Luke, who wrote entirely for Greeks, choosing to translate into their language a term whose original force could be apprehended only by those acquainted with the local circumstances with which it was connected. The name Zelotes, which may be faithfully translated by its English derivative, Zealot, has a meaning deeply involved in some of the most bloody scenes in the history of the Jews, in the apostolic age. This name, or rather its Hebrew original, was assumed by a set of ferocious desperadoes, who, under the honorable pretense of a holy zeal for their country and religion, set all law at defiance, and constituting themselves at once the judges and the executors of right, they went through the land waging war against the Romans, and