A name etched into a 2,000-year-old burial box may offer a rare archaeological link to the man the Gospels say helped Jesus carry the cross.
The limestone container, called an ossuary and traditionally used to store human bones, is inscribed with the words “Alexander, son of Simon.” That combination mirrors the father-and-son names mentioned in the Gospel of Mark. Archaeologists discovered the box in a Jerusalem tomb in 1941.
The discovery has fueled debate for decades. Researchers have questioned whether the inscription identifies the biblical family or merely reflects two common names from the period.
New Testament scholar Dr Jeremiah Johnston believes the evidence makes a connection with the Bible’s Simon increasingly credible.
“We have a Simon, a son called Alexander, and a family linked to Cyrene, buried in Jerusalem during the appropriate period, before 70 AD,” Johnston told Our News Outlet. “Is it the same family? I think that is very plausible, if not likely.”
The lid provides another possible clue. It includes a Hebrew marking that has been interpreted as referring to Cyrene, the North African city identified in the Bible as Simon’s place of origin.
According to Mark’s Gospel, Simon was passing through Jerusalem after coming in from the countryside when Roman soldiers compelled him to carry Jesus’ cross.
“The combination of the name, the son, the Cyrenian connection and the date is remarkable,” Johnston said. “In my view, the evidence leans toward a genuine connection.”
The limestone ossuary is marked with the words “Alexander, son of Simon,” echoing the father-and-son names recorded in the Gospel of Mark
Although many biblical scholars think the ossuary may belong to the family described in the New Testament, Johnston stressed that the identification cannot be treated as certain.
“Simon was the most widespread Jewish name at the time, and Alexander was also a popular name,” he explained.
Eleven ossuaries were recovered from the Jerusalem tomb where the inscribed box was found.
Johnston, whose book The Jesus Discoveries became a #1 New York Times bestseller, noted that the tomb contained no ossuary specifically associated with Alexander’s brother, Rufus.
Mark 15:21 says: “A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.”
Because the other expected burial boxes have not been identified, Johnston said the evidence falls short of proof, but may still represent a case of “high probability.”
He argued that Mark’s decision to name Simon’s sons is significant: “What is not in doubt is what Mark is doing. He names Simon’s sons because his original readers knew who they were.
“He is directing readers toward living witnesses who could have confirmed the account. That is not how ancient legends typically function; it is how eyewitness history works. This ossuary, he said, suggests that Mark’s details correspond to real people living in first-century Jerusalem.”
The ossuary may have contained the remains of Alexander, identified in the Bible as the son of Simon, who was forced to help Jesus carry the cross
Three inscriptions appear across the ossuary’s front, rear and lid. The names Alexander and Simon are repeated in more than one location.
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In a 2003 account for Biblical Archaeology Review, contributor Tom Powers pointed to what appears to be an engraving error. The inscriber seems to have started writing Alexander’s name alongside Simon’s, then abandoned that attempt and began again on the lines below.
The lid contains lettering in both Greek and Hebrew. The Greek inscription translates as ‘of Alexander,’ while ‘QRNYT’ alongside his name has been interpreted as a reference to Cyrene.
That reading remains uncertain, but Powers suggested that the engraver may have made a one-letter error when writing the Hebrew word for ‘Cyrenian.’
Powers reported that Israeli historian Tal Ilan, an expert on ancient Jewish names, considered it ‘very likely’ that the chest belonged to the Alexander mentioned in Mark’s Gospel.
For Powers, the names, family relationship, apparent North African origins and first-century Jerusalem setting create a compelling parallel with Mark’s account.
They do not, however, establish that the chest belonged to the biblical family.
Powers raised an even more intriguing possibility: the chest may once have held the remains of both Alexander and his father, Simon.
In a follow-up analysis published in 2006, he argued that differences in the lettering could reveal how the chest was reused and its inscriptions added over time.
One clue is the name Simon, carved near the upper center of the chest’s back in noticeably deeper lines than the surrounding lettering.
The inscription identifying Alexander as Simon’s son appears below it in much shallower strokes. Powers interpreted this as evidence that Simon’s name was carved first and Alexander’s added later.
Another clue appears on the opposite side, where the two names were written on separate lines in green chalk or a similar substance.
Powers argued that the Greek wording there could be read as a list of two individuals whose remains shared the chest. Burial boxes containing more than one person are known from the period.
Under his proposed sequence, Simon’s bones were placed inside first. Alexander’s remains were added later, prompting someone to expand the inscription.
When the chest was repositioned within the family tomb, Powers suggested, its exposed side received the chalk label identifying both men.
The theory remains disputed, as many scholars rejected an earlier suggestion of a shared burial, arguing that the inscriptions identified only one buried person – Alexander.
Powers also noted that the excavation report did not document bones recovered from inside the chests or establish whether any analysis had determined how many individuals they contained.
Other evidence helps place the burial in the period described by Johnston, no more than 40 years after Jesus’ death.
Pottery found in the tomb, including a distinctive Herodian oil lamp, supported dating its final use to the first century AD, before Jerusalem fell to the Romans in AD 70.
