Commontide
Red-Letter Day
Apostles & Martyrs
October 28
also known as Simon the Zealot and Jude, Simon and Jude, Thaddaeus and Simon, Simon Cananaeus and Jude
Simon and Jude, two of the Twelve, are kept together on October 28. Simon carries the surname "the Zealot," and Jude, also called Thaddaeus, asked Jesus a question at the Last Supper, to which Jesus replied: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” The New Testament says little more of either man, but the church has long believed that they carried the gospel together into Persia and died together for it. Because of their share ministry and martyrdom she keeps them on one feast together as the served. Jude is remembered above all as the friend of hopeless causes, the apostle many Christians remember when every other door seems shut.
Simon and Jude were two of the Twelve whom Jesus chose and sent out to preach. They both shared a name with another disciple. There were two named Simon (the Greek spelling for the Hebrew name Simeon) and two named Judas (Jude and Judas are variant English spellings for the Hebrew name Judah). Simon carried an epitaph that marked him out even among the apostles: he was called Simon the Zealot, a name that spoke of fire, of a man who longed for God’s kingdom to be restored on earth through the political overthrow of Rome. Jude went by more than one name too. Some called him Thaddaeus. Others knew him as Judas, son of James. John in his gospel is quick to caveat that this Judas was not the traitor when he is mentioned.
Of Simon, the Gospels tell us almost nothing beyond his name and his epitaph. He is on every list of the Twelve, standing beside Peter and Andrew and James and John, present at Pentecost with the rest, and there the scriptural record falls silent. But that surname alone tells a story. To call a man "the Zealot" in first century Judea was to name him among the most passionate opponents of Roman rule, the party willing to take up the sword for God's kingdom against Caesar's. Whether Simon had been such a fighter before Jesus called him, or whether the name simply marked the burning temper of the man, the church has never been sure, but it seems likely that Jesus called him from his earthly passion to restore Israel’s Kingdom to follow him in a kingdom that would grow invisibly like leaven to change the world. What is certain is what Jesus did with him: he took a man capable of that kind of fire and made him an apostle of peace, one of the foundation stones of a kingdom that would not come by the sword at all. Even Jude’s question about the nature of how Jesus will be shown to the world may point to this transformation in the disciples as a group.
Jude gets one moment of dialogue recorded by John. In the upper room, on the last night before the cross, Jesus had just promised that he would show himself, after his death, to those who loved him, but not to the world at large, and Jude could not let the words pass without a clarifying question. "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" It is an honest question, the kind any of us might ask: if this is true for us, why will it not obvious to everyone? Jesus answered him with one of the tenderest promises in the whole Gospel: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." The kingdom would not be announced from the rooftops. It would come and make its home in the hearts of those who loved him, one household at a time. The leaven would spread and the birds would rest one loving, obedient child living in the presence of God at a time.
After Pentecost the two men pass out of the biblical record, but the church did not forget then. From ancient times Christians told that Simon and Jude went east together, into Persia and the lands beyond the Euphrates, preaching where the gospel had not yet been carried, sowing the word and seeing it grow. There they are said to have converted great numbers by their preaching and their courage, and there, at last, both are said to have been killed for the faith on the very same day. Simon, tradition says, was cut down with a saw, and for that reason the saw became his mark in Christian art ever after. Jude, it is remembered, died by the club or the halberd of men who would not have him preach any longer. Since its early days the church has wanted its people to remember that these two very different men, the zealot and the other Judas, went out together, stood together, and died together, faithful to their King and his Kingdom to the end.
And it is Jude, above all, whom the church has never stopped turning to. Because his name was too near the traitor's for comfort, the story goes that for centuries the faithful hesitated to call on him, and so he received fewer prayers than any other apostle, and was left, in a sense, with more time to answer the ones he did receive. Whatever the truth of that account, it is why countless Christians since have named him the patron of desperate causes, the one to ask when hope itself seems gone. It is fitting, too, because Jude wrote a short letter that has come down to us in the New Testament, one that does not flinch from hard truths about those who had crept into the church to lead the faithful astray, but that ends in words as hopeful as any in Scripture: "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." Whatever darkness a soul brings to Jude, that is the word he leaves it with: kept from stumbling, presented blameless, and full of joy before the God who is able to do it.
How we know Simon and Jude is, by apostolic standards, very little. Neither man has a Gospel narrative of his own. Both appear only in the four lists of the Twelve, in Matthew 10:2-4, Mark 3:16-19, Luke 6:14-16, and Acts 1:13, and in the general notices of the apostles' presence at Pentecost. Compared with Peter, John, or Paul, whose words and deeds fill chapters of the New Testament, Simon and Jude are two of the most sparsely attested of the Twelve.
Simon is named in every apostolic list with the surname "the Zealot" (Luke 6:15, Acts 1:13) or "the Cananaean" (Matthew 10:4, Mark 3:18), a title transliterating the Aramaic qanai, meaning "zealous one," the same root as the Greek zelotes. Whether this marks him as a former member of the Zealot party, the Jewish resistance movement that would rise against Rome in the war of 66 to 70, or simply describes a zealous temperament, scholars have debated since antiquity and cannot settle from the text alone. The Synoptic Gospels give him no words and no scene of his own.
Jude presents a harder question still, one the church has held honestly rather than resolved by force. Matthew and Mark name an apostle "Thaddaeus" (with some manuscripts reading "Lebbaeus," or "Lebbaeus who was called Thaddaeus") in the same slot where Luke and Acts instead name "Judas the son of James." Tradition has long identified these as the same man under different names, a common enough practice in the first century, and it is this Judas whom John's Gospel takes care to distinguish from the betrayer: "Judas (not Iscariot)" (John 14:22). A further question, older than the Reformation and still live among scholars, is whether this apostle Jude is the same person as "Jude, the brother of James" who names himself as the author of the New Testament epistle bearing his name (Jude 1), and whether that James and Jude are in turn the brothers of the Lord named in Mark 6:3, one of whom became the first bishop of Jerusalem and is kept by Commontide as James of Jerusalem. The church has never spoken with one voice on whether the apostle, the epistle's author, and the Lord's brother are one man, two, or three; ancient and modern writers have argued every combination, and the letter's own authorship remains debated on grounds of date and style as well as identity. Commontide keeps the traditional ascription of the epistle to the apostle Jude, and states plainly that this is a live question rather than a settled one.
The epistle itself, whoever wrote it, has a fixed and urgent purpose: it warns a threatened church against "certain people [who] have crept in unnoticed... ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ" (Jude 4), reaching back to the exodus, the rebellious angels, and the judgment of Sodom as warnings against apostasy, before closing in the doxology so many have prayed since: "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy... be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen" (Jude 24-25).
Simon and Jude are kept together on October 28, the day the Western church has long assigned to their joint martyrdom, and Commontide keeps them on that day as two of the Twelve. In art Simon is shown holding the saw that tradition names as the instrument of his death, and Jude is shown with a club or halberd, or carrying an image of Christ's face, recalling a legend that he brought the Lord's own likeness to a king in the East. Their common emblem across the centuries has been the shared mission itself: two apostles pictured side by side, sent out together and remembered together, a reminder that the gospel was carried to the ends of the earth by companionships as much as by individuals.
Of the two, it is Jude who has drawn the deeper and more widespread devotion, as the beloved patron of desperate and hopeless causes. The tradition holds that because his name stood so close to that of Judas Iscariot, the faithful long hesitated to invoke him, fearing to call on the wrong Judas, and so he went for centuries strangely underprayed among the apostles. Christians came to believe that Jude, moved by this very neglect, was quick and generous to answer those who did turn to him, especially in the causes everyone else had given up on. Devotion to him grew markedly in the Middle Ages, encouraged by figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Bridget of Sweden, and has never slackened since; his shrines and novenas remain among the most visited in the church today, filled with the petitions of those who have nowhere else to turn. It is a devotion Commontide keeps gladly: there is something fitting, even something of the gospel itself, in the church's coming to love most the apostle it once, in its fear, nearly overlooked.
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The Epistle of Jude(Greek, 1st century)
The one surviving New Testament writing traditionally attributed to Jude; a short, urgent warning against false teachers, closing in one of the best loved doxologies in the New Testament.
Public domain: ESV text at Bible Gateway
The Apostolic History of Pseudo-Abdias: The Passion of Simon and Jude(Latin, 6th-7th century)
The earliest coherent source for the tradition that Simon and Jude preached together in Persia and died together as martyrs; the origin of the Golden Legend's account and of both apostles' iconography.
Public domain: M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (1924), Wikisource
The Golden Legend: Simon and Jude(Latin/English, 13th century (Caxton tr. 1483))
The thirteenth century compilation that carried the Persian-mission tradition to the whole of medieval Christendom and fixed the two apostles' common feast and emblems in popular devotion.
Public domain: Christian Classics Ethereal Library (PDF)
The Search for the Twelve Apostles(English, 2008 (Tyndale Momentum edn.))
Recommended: William Steuart McBirnie (Tyndale House)
A lay-accessible, believing-register survey of the traditions surrounding each of the Twelve, including Simon and Jude, useful precisely because the canonical record for these two is so short.
Primary sources. The whole of the New Testament evidence for Simon and Jude is the four lists of the Twelve (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), Jude's question at the Last Supper (John 14:22-23), and the epistle traditionally ascribed to Jude, all freely available at Bible Gateway in the ESV.
Principal hagiography. The apocryphal Passio Simonis et Judae, part of the Latin apostolic-acts collection later attached to the name of "Abdias of Babylon," is the earliest coherent source for the Persian mission and joint martyrdom; an English translation is available in M. R. James's The Apocryphal New Testament at Wikisource/The_Secondary_Acts/The_Apostolic_History_of_Pseudo-Abdias). Jacobus de Voragine's thirteenth century Golden Legend carried the story to the whole medieval church and is free at CCEL.
Recommended modern biography. No single in-print biography treats Simon and Jude at length, since the New Testament record is so short; the fullest sober modern treatment of both men within their company is found in commentaries on the Gospel lists of the Twelve. Clinton E. Arnold's editorial volumes in the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary series address the apostolic lists with care for the ordinary reader; readers wanting a single believing-register guide to all twelve companions of Jesus, Simon and Jude included, are well served by William Steuart McBirnie's The Search for the Twelve Apostles (Tyndale House, 2008 edition), still in print and widely available.
Further reading. The Catholic Encyclopedia entries on Simon the Apostle and St. Jude at New Advent give compact, well-sourced summaries of the New Testament evidence and the later traditions. Richard Bauckham's Jude, 2 Peter in the Word Biblical Commentary series is the standard critical treatment of the epistle's authorship question for readers who want the scholarly debate in full.
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Simon is as much to say as obedient, or being in heaviness. And he had a double name; he was said Simon Zelotes, and Simon Cananean of Cana a street that is in Galilee, there whereas our Lord converted the water into wine. And Zelotes is as much to say as Cananean. This holy man had in him obedience of the commandments by execution, heaviness by pity of torment, and had love of souls by firm ardour of love. Judas is as much to say as confessing or glorious; or Judas is as much to say as giving joy. For he had confession of faith, glory of reign, and glory of the everlasting joy. This Judas was called by many names. He was said Judas James, for he was brother to James the Less, and he was called Thaddeus, which is as much to say as taking a prince; or Thadee is said of Thadea, that is a vesture, and of Deus, that is God, for he was vesture royal of God by ornament of virtues, by which he took Christ the prince. He is said also in the History Ecclesiastic, Lebbæus, which is as much to say as heart, or worshipper of heart. Or he is said Lebbæus of lebes, that is a vessel of heart by great hardiness, or a worshipper of heart by purity, a vessel by plenitude of grace, for he deserved to be a vessel of virtues and a caldron of grace. And Abdias, bishop of Babylon, by the apostles ordained, wrote their passion and legend in Greek, and Tropæus the disciple of Abdias translated it out of Greek into Latin. And he was named Africanus.
Of the Holy SS. Simon and Jude.
Simon Cananean and Judas Thaddeus were brethren of James the Less and sons of Mary Cleophas, which was married to Alpheus. And Jude was sent of Thomas to the king Abgarus of Edessa after the ascension of our Lord. And it is read in the History Scholastic that the said Abgarus sent an epistle unto our Lord Jesu Christ in this manner. Abgarus the son of Euchania to Jesus, blessed Saviour, which appears in the places of Jerusalem, sends salutation. I have heard of you, and that the healths and recoverings that you make and do, be without medicines and herbs, and that you make the blind to see by yours only word, and the lame to go, the mesels to be cured and made whole, and the dead bodies to live again. Which things heard of you, I ween in my courage that you are one of two, that is that you are God that are descended from heaven for to do this, or that you are the son of God that do such things. Wherefore I pray you by writing that you will travail so much as to come to me and heal me of my malady, of which I have long been vexed. And I have heard say that the Jews murmur against you and lie in await against you. Come therefore to me, for I have a little city, but it is honest, and shall shall well suffice to us both. Our Lord Jesus answered him by writing in these words: Blessed are you that have believed in me when you have not seen me. It is written of me, that they that see me not shall believe in me, and they that see me shall not believe. Of that you have written to me that I shall come to you, me behoves to accomplish that which I am sent for, and after to be received of him from whom I am sent. When I am ascended, I shall send to you one of my disciples to heal you and quicken you. This is written in Historia Ecclesiastica. And when Abgarus saw that he might not see God presently, after that it is said in an ancient history, as John Damascene witnesses in his fourth book, he sent a painter unto Jesu Christ for to figure the image of our Lord, to the end that at least that he might see him by his image, whom he might not see in his visage. And when the painter came, because of the great splendour and light that shone in the visage of our Lord Jesu Christ, he could not behold it, ne could not counterfeit it by no figure. And when our Lord saw this thing he took from the painter a linen cloth and set it upon his visage, and emprinted the very phisiognomy of his visage therein, and sent it unto the king Abgarus which so much desired it.
And in the same history is contained how this image was figured. It was well-eyed, well-browed, a long visage or cheer, and inclined, which is a sign of maturity or ripe sadness. That epistle of our Lord Jesu Christ is of such virtue, that in the city of Edessa no heretic ne no paynim may live therein, ne none tyrant may grieve it. For if any people come against that city by force of arms, a child shall stand upon the gate, and shall read that epistle, and that same day either the enemies shall flee and be afraid, or they shall make peace with them of the town. And as is said: This has been done. But this city has been sith taken of the Saracens and touched in such wise, that for the multiplying of sins this benefit is lost.
Also it is read in the History Ecclesiastic that when our Lord was ascended into heaven, Thomas the apostle sent Thaddeus, that was Jude, unto the king Abgarus according to the promise of our Lord. And when he was come to him, and had told to him that he was messenger of our Lord Jesu Christ, which had promised to send him one, then Abgarus saw in the visage of Thaddeus a marvellous and godly brightness. And when he had seen it he was all abashed and afeared, and worshipped our Lord saying: Verily, you are the disciple of Jesu Christ, Son of God, which sent to me word that he would send to me some one of his disciples that should heal me and give to me life. To whom Thaddeus said: If you believe in the Son of God you shall have all the desires of your heart. And Abgarus said: I believe on him, verily, and those Jews that slew him, I would gladly slay them if it were possible to me, and had power, howbeit that the authority lets it. And as it is read in some places and books, that Abgarus was leper, and Thaddeus took the epistle of our Saviour, and rubbed and frotted therewith the visage of Abgarus, and anon he received full health.
Judas preached first in Mesopotamia and in Pontus, and Simon preached in Egypt, and from thence came they into Persia, and found there two enchanters, Zaroes and Arphaxat, whom S. Matthew had driven out of Ethiopia. And found there also Baradach, a duke of the kings of Babylon, which should go in battle against them of India, and could have none answer of his gods. And then they went to a temp]e nigh to the city, and there they had answer that because that the apostles that were come they might not answer. Then the duke did enquire for them, and found them, and demanded them wherefore they were come, and what they were. Which answered: If you demand of our lineage, we be Hebrews, and if you demand of our condition, we be servants of Jesu Christ, and if you demand wherefore we be come, we be for your health. To whom the duke answered: When I shall return joyously from the battle I shall hear you. To whom the apostles said: It is more convenable to you to know him now, by whom you may overcome and appease them that be rebel to you. And the duke answered: I see you more mighty than our gods; I pray you to say to us tofore the end of the battle. And the apostles said: Because that you know your gods to be liars, we command them that they give answer to that you demand, because that when they have we shall prove that they have lied. Then the idols said that the battle should be great, and much people should be overthrown on both sides. And then the apostles began to laugh and the duke said to them: I am afeard and you laugh. And the apostles said: Doubt you nothing, for peace shall be made among you, and tomorn at the hour of tierce the messengers of the Medes shall come, and shall submit them to your puissance with peace. And then the bishops of the idols made a great laughter, and said to the duke: These men here would assure you here, to the end that you should believe foolishly, and that you should be betaken of your adversaries. And the apostles said: We say not abide a month, but one day only, and you shall be vanquisher all in peace. Then the duke made to be kept that one and that other, that they that said the truth should be honoured, and the liars punished. Then on the morn, like as the apostles had said, it happed, and then the duke would have burnt the bishops of the idols, but the apostles letted him that he should not slay them, for they were not come for to slay but for to quicken the dead. And then the duke much marvelled that they would not that they should be slain ne receive none of their goods, and brought them to the king and said: These be gods hid in form of men. And when he had told all to him in the presence of his enchanters, the enchanters, being moved of envy, said that they were malicious and wicked men, and purposed some malice against the realm subtly. Then the duke said to them: Now if you dare, assay you and dispute with them. And the enchanters said: If you will, you shall see that they shall not now speak. We being present, make men to come hither that be eloquent and can well speak. And if they dare speak tofore us despise you us, and say we be fools. And then were brought tofore them many advocates, and anon they were made dumb tofore the enchanters, so that by signs they might not show that they might not speak. Then said the enchanters to the king: To the end that you know that we be gods, we shall suffer them to speak, but they shall not mow go, and then we shall give to them their going and shall take away their sight, and yet shall their eyes be open. And when they had done all these things, the duke brought the advocates all confused unto the apostles, and when the advocates saw the apostles so evil clothed, they had of them great despite in their courage. To whom Simon said: Ofttimes it haps that among coffers of gold wrought with precious stones be right evil things enclosed, and within coffers of tree be laid gold rings and precious stones. Promise you that you will forsake the idols and will worship one only God invisible, and we shall make the sign of the cross in your foreheads, and you shall then mow confound these enchanters. And when these advocates had renounced the idols and were marked in the foreheads with the sign of the cross, they entered again to the king tofore the enchanters. Then might they not be overcome of the enchanters, but confounded them openly before the king and all the people. The enchanters were then angry, and made to come a great multitude of serpents. Then the apostles came anon by the commandment of the king, and filled their mantles with the serpents, and threw them against the enchanters, saying: Move you not in the name of our Lord Jesu Christ but be you to-torn and beaten, so that you cry and bray in showing what sorrow and pain you suffer. And then when the serpents bit and eat the flesh of the enchanters, they cried and howled like wolves, and the king and the others prayed the apostles that they would suffer them to die with the serpents. And the apostles answered that they were sent for to bring men from death to life, and not from life to death. Then made they their prayers and commanded the serpents that they should take from them again the venom that they had shed, and return again to the places that they came from. And the enchanters felt greater pain when they drew out their venom again, than they did the first time when they bit them. And the apostles said to them: You shall feel this pain three days, and at the third day you shall be whole, so that you depart from your malice. And when they had been tormented three days without meat and drink and without sleep, the apostles came to them and said: God deigns not to have service by force, and therefore arise you all whole and go your way, you have power to do what you will. And they, abiding in their malice, arose up and fled from the apostles and moved almost against them all Babylon.
After, the daughter of a duke conceived a son by fornication, and at her deliverance thereof she defamed an holy deacon, and said that he had defouled her and she had conceived of him. And when the friends of her would have slain the deacon, the apostles came and demanded when the child had been born. And they said: Yesterday, the first hour of the day. And the apostles said: Bring hither the child to us, and also the deacon that you accuse. And when that was done, the apostles said to the child: Say to us in the name of our Lord if this deacon has done this deed, and the child answered: This deacon is chaste and an holy man, ne he never defouled his flesh. And then the parents and friends required that the apostle should demand who had done that felony. They answered: It appertains to us for to excuse the innocents, and not betray ne hurt them that be culpable. That time it happed that two cruel tigers, which were enclosed in a pit, brake out and devoured all them that they met and encountered, and then the apostles came to them and made them as meek and debonair, in the name of our Lord, as they had been sheep or lambs. And then the apostles would have departed thence, but they were holden by prayers so that they abode there a year and three months, and in that espace of time the king and more than sixty thousand men were baptized, without children. And the foresaid enchanters went into a city called Suamar, whereas were seventy bishops of idols, whom they moved against the apostles, so that when they came thither, either they should do sacrifice to the idols or they should be slain. And when the apostles had gone round about the province, they came to said city, and anon all the bishops and the people took them and brought them to the temple of the sun. And the devils began to cry in the simulachres: What will these apostles of the living God do to us? Lo! how we be burnt by flames in their entering into this city. And then the angel of our Lord appeared unto the apostles, and said to them: Choose you of two things that one, that is, either that this people be suddenly dead or slain, or that you be martyred. To whom they said: We will that you convert them here, and lead us to the pain of martyrdom. And they then commanded silence, and the apostles said: Because that you shall know that these idols be full of devils, we comnmand them for to come out, and that each of them break and destroy his false image. And anon two Ethiopians, black and naked, issued out of the idols, all the people seeing which were abashed, and all tobrake their idols, and went their way, crying cruelly. And when the bishops saw this, they ran upon the apostles and hewed them to death anon. And that same hour, which was right fair weather, came so great thunder and lightning that the temple was smitten in three, and the two enchanters were turned into coals by the stroke of thunder. And the king bare the bodies of the apostles into his city, and did do make a church of marvellous greatness in the honour of them. And it is founden in divers places, of S. Simon, that he was nailed to the cross, which thing Isidore says in the book of the Death of the Apostles, and Eusebius in the History Ecclesiastic, and Bede upon the Acts of the Apostles, and Master John Beleth in his Summa witnesses the same. And as they say, when he had preached in Egypt, he came again and was made bishop in Jerusalem after the death of James the Less, and was chosen of the court of the apostles, and it is said that he raised thirty dead men to life. When he had governed the church of Jerusalem many years, unto the time of Trajan the emperor, in the time that Atticus was consul in Jerusalem, of whom he was taken and tormented and done to much wrong. And at the last he was tormented and fixed to the cross, and the judge and all they that were there marvelled that the man which was six score years old might suffer the torment of the cross. And some say verily that it was not this Simon that suffered the martyrdom of the cross, but it was another, the son of Cleophas, brother of Joseph, and Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, witnesses it in his chronicle. For Isidore and Eusebius corrected their chronicles of that they said tofore, which appears by Bede, that when he felt this he revoked it in his retractions. And the same witnesses Usuard in his Martyrology. Then let us devoutly pray these apostles to be our special advocates unto our blessed Lord Jesu Christ their master, to have pity and mercy on us. Amen.
Beyond the New Testament, the church has long told that Simon and Jude carried the gospel together into Persia and the lands of Mesopotamia, in the Parthian and then Sasanian sphere east of Roman Syria, converting many and at last dying as martyrs on the same day, Simon by the saw and Jude by the club. This account first reaches us in a coherent form centuries after the apostles: an apocryphal Latin collection of apostolic acts, compiled by an unknown hand in perhaps the later sixth century and later attached to the name of one "Abdias, bishop of Babylon," which the medieval Golden Legend then carried to every corner of Christendom. No first century writer records where Simon and Jude went after Pentecost or how they died; the canonical record is silent on both men's later careers, and the joint Persian mission and shared martyrdom are the church's received tradition, not apostolic-age history. That the story was told and believed for well over a millennium, shaped the iconography of both apostles, and gave them their common feast, is itself a fact of their history, whatever judgment is made about its details. It endured, most plausibly, because it answered a real longing: to know that these two obscure men of the Twelve, so unlike in temperament, had not simply vanished from the story, but had gone out together, borne witness together, and kept faith with their Lord to the end, just as the church already believed of every other apostle it could not otherwise trace.
Some ancient and modern writers have wondered whether Simon the Zealot is the same man as Simeon of Jerusalem, the relative of the Lord whom Hegesippus (writing in the second century, preserved in Eusebius) names as James of Jerusalem's successor as bishop of the Jerusalem church. Hegesippus himself, however, calls this Simeon a son of Clopas, a different figure from Simon the apostle, and most scholars treat the two as distinct men whose names and near-contemporary lives later invited confusion rather than as one man remembered under two roles.
Online resources. The full text of the apostolic lists and the epistle of Jude are at Bible Gateway; the apocryphal Passio Simonis et Judae is at Wikisource/The_Secondary_Acts/The_Apostolic_History_of_Pseudo-Abdias); Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, which preserves Hegesippus's account of Simeon of Jerusalem, is free at CCEL.
Grant, O God, that as your apostles Simon and Jude were faithful and zealous in their mission, so we may with ardent devotion make known the love and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Deuteronomy 32:1–4Psalm 119:89–96Ephesians 2:13–22John 15:17–27