Mark 15:21

The father of Alexander and Rufus. — The fact recorded here, and not elsewhere, is one of the most striking instances of the independent character of St. Mark’s Gospel. It is clear that it had a special interest for himself and the readers for whom he wrote; what that interest was we can only conjecture. The two names were so common that we cannot arrive at more than a probable identification, but the mention of a “Rufus chosen in the Lord” as prominent among the Christians of Rome (Romans 16:13), taken together with the evidence which connects St. Mark’s Gospel with that Church (see Introduction), tends to the conclusion that he was one of the two brothers thus mentioned. But if so, then we are led on to some other facts of no slight interest. St. Paul speaks of the mother of Rufus as being also his mother — i.e., endeared to him by many proofs of maternal kindness — and so we are led to the belief that the wife of Simon of Cyrene must, at some time or other, at Antioch or Corinth, and afterwards at Rome, have come within the inner circle of St. Paul’s friends. This, in its turn, connects itself with the prominence given to “men of Cyrene” in St. Luke’s account of the foundation of the Gentile Church of Antioch (Acts 11:20). (See Note on Matthew 27:20.)