Simon the Chanaanite was so called from the village of Chana, from which he originated. He is also called the Zealot. He was the brother of the apostle Thaddeus, who is also called Judas. Chana is interpreted “zeal.” Simon is interpreted “obedient” or “placing sadness”; Judas, “confessing” or “glorious”; and Thaddeus, “seizing the prince.”
After the coming of the Holy Spirit, Judas first preached in Mesopotamia and Pontus, while Simon preached in Egypt. The two then went together through Persia. There they found the two magicians Zaroes and Arphaxat, whom Matthew the Apostle had driven from Ethiopia.
[Running head: Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen, Folio 197.]
At that time Waradach, commander of the Babylonian king’s army, was about to set out for war against the Indians, but he could obtain no answers from his gods. He therefore sent messengers to a shrine in a nearby city to inquire into the cause of this silence. They received the answer that their lord could not respond because of the arrival of the apostles of God.
After the apostles had been sought through the city and found, they were led to the commander of the army. He asked who they were, where they came from, and why they had arrived. The apostles answered each question. They said that by race they were Hebrews, that they were servants of Jesus Christ, and that they had come there from Judea for the people’s salvation.
Commander Waradach said to them: “When I return from battle, I shall hear you.”
The apostles answered: “It is more fitting that you now come to know him by whose help you can emerge victorious, or at least find your enemies entirely peaceable.”
Varadach said: “I see that you are more powerful than our gods. Foretell the outcome of the war for us.”
The apostles answered: “So that you may know your gods are deceitful, we command them to answer your questions. When they have spoken about what they do not know, we shall prove that they have lied about everything.”
The idol priests then said that a great war would occur and that many people would fall on both sides. The apostles began to laugh.
Waradach said: “Fear has overcome me, and you laugh.”
The apostles replied: “Do not fear, for peace has entered with us. Tomorrow, at the third hour, envoys of the Indians will send word that they submit peacefully to your authority.”
The priests of the idols also began to laugh and told the commander: “These men wish to make you feel secure so that, remaining incautious, you may be crushed by the enemy.”
The apostles said to him: “We have not told you to wait one month but one day. Tomorrow you will emerge victorious in peace.”
The commander ordered both groups kept under guard so that the truth of the outcome would bring honor to whichever had spoken truthfully. When, on the next day, what the apostles had predicted occurred, the commander ordered the priests burned as liars.
The apostles prevented him, saying: “We were sent not to kill human beings but to give them life.”
The commander marveled that they had prevented the priests from being killed and had refused to accept the priests’ goods when offered to them. He brought them to the king and said: “O king, these men are gods concealed in human form. They foretold to us everything that happened with the Indians.”
While the commander related these things, the magicians Zaroes and Arphaxat were present. Moved by jealous envy, they said that the apostles were wicked men who were subtly plotting against the kingdom.
The commander said to them: “If you dare, contend with them.”
The magicians replied: “If you wish to see that they do not dare speak in our presence, have the most eloquent men come here. If they dare to speak against us, you shall judge us ignorant.”
Many advocates were therefore brought before them. By the magicians’ art they were made so mute that they could neither speak nor even indicate with gestures what they wished.
The magicians said to the king: “So that you may know we are gods, we command them to speak but to be unable to move from this place.” This occurred. Then the magicians commanded them to walk but to see nothing, and that too occurred.
When these things had been done, Commander Waradach led the advocates, whom the magicians had thus confounded, to the apostles. When the advocates saw the apostles clothed in rags and contemptible attire, they despised them in their hearts.
Simon said to them: “It often happens that a cheap object is enclosed within gilded chests adorned with gems, while necklaces of precious stones are stored inside the cheapest cases. When someone buys merchandise, he considers not the appearance of those who carry it but the quality of the thing itself.
“Promise, therefore, to depart from the worship of idols and to worship the one invisible God. We shall make the sign of the cross upon your foreheads, and it will enable you to confound the magicians.”
When they had made this promise and the apostles had armed them with the sign of the cross, they returned to the king in the magicians’ presence. The magicians could no longer overcome them, while the advocates mocked the magicians.
In anger, the magicians caused a multitude of serpents to appear. At the king’s command the apostles were immediately brought in. They spread out their cloaks, filled them with serpents, and cast them upon the magicians, saying: “You shall not die, but after the serpents have torn you, you shall utter groans of your pains.”
As the serpents tore their flesh, the magicians howled like wolves because of the intense pain. The king and those standing by asked the apostles to allow the serpents to kill them.
The apostles answered: “We were sent to recall the dead to life, not to cast the living headlong into death.”
After praying, the apostles commanded the serpents to suck back all the poison that they had poured into the magicians’ bodies by biting them and then to return to their own places. The magicians suffered greater torment when the poison was withdrawn than from the serpents’ bites.
The apostles told them: “You will feel pain for three days, but on the third day you will be delivered, so that even in this way you might withdraw from your wickedness.”
The magicians went to their lodging and remained for three days in pain, without food, drink, or sleep. The apostles visited them and restored them free and whole, saying: “God is not pleased by forced service. Arise and go wherever you wish.”
But they persisted in wickedness, fled from the apostles’ sight, and stirred almost all Babylonia against them.
Meanwhile, the daughter of a certain commander conceived through fornication. After she gave birth to a male child, her relatives asked by whom she had conceived. She accused a certain deacon who was a disciple of the apostles. Because the girl’s parents sought to kill the deacon, the apostles intervened and heard the case.
They asked when the boy had been born, and the parents answered, “Today.” The apostles had the infant and the innocent deacon brought before them. They said: “Little child, say in the name of the Lord Jesus whether this deacon committed this act.”
The infant answered in the name of the one God: “This deacon is chaste and holy and has never defiled his flesh.”
When the girl’s parents insisted that the infant name the perpetrator of the crime, the apostles answered: “It is fitting for us to absolve the innocent; it is not fitting for us to betray the guilty.”
At their preaching, which was confirmed by miracles, more than sixty thousand people were baptized together with the king. The apostles remained there for a year and several months to instruct them.
The magicians went to another city in which there were seventy priests of idols. They stirred these priests against the apostles so that, if the apostles came there, they would either compel them to sacrifice or kill them.
After traversing the province while preaching, the apostles at last came to that city. The priests and the whole populace seized them, led them to the temple of the sun, and sought to compel them to sacrifice to it.
Through those possessed by them, the demons began to cry: “What have we to do with you, apostles of the living God? Behold, at your entrance we are burned by flames.”
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to the apostles and said: “Choose either the sudden destruction of these people or your own martyrdom.”
After a silence, the apostles said: “So that you may know that your images are full of demons, we command the demons to come out of them and shatter the images themselves.”
Two demons therefore came out from them like naked Ethiopians and shattered all the idols.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
When the priests saw this, they rushed upon the apostles and killed them. At that hour, although the sky was perfectly clear, lightning bolts descended and split the temple into three parts. The two magicians who were present were struck by lightning and turned into charcoal.
The king of Babylon became a Christian. He had the apostles’ bodies carried to his city and, after building a church of marvelous size there, buried them honorably. Their bodies are now said to be in the church of Saint Peter at Rome.
Abdias, bishop of Babylon, wrote their legend in Hebrew, and Affricanus translated it into Latin.
Some writers, including Isidore in On the Death of the Apostles, have written that the apostle Simon was crucified. Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History and Bede assert that, after Simon’s preaching in Egypt and the death of the apostle James the Less, he was made bishop of Jerusalem. In Trajan’s time, when Simon was one hundred and twenty years old, the governor of that province fastened him to a cross. Everyone, including the judge himself, marveled that one so decrepit could endure the punishment of the cross.
The truth of the matter, however, is that this Simon, bishop of Jerusalem, was not Simon the Apostle, the brother of Thaddeus, but another Simon, the son of Cleophe. Hence the aforesaid doctors later retracted in their chronicles what they had said as reported above.
One epistle of the apostle Thaddeus, who is also called Judas, is included among the canonical books in the canon of Sacred Scripture.
As is said in the Ecclesiastical History, he was sent to heal Abagarus, king of the city of Edissene. A letter sent by Abagari to Christ before the Passion and Jesus’s reply to him are extant. Because letters of this kind are numbered among the apocrypha in Distinction 15, The Holy Roman Church, we omit their contents.