Simon (Temple officer in 2 Maccabees)

Simon is known only from 2 Maccabees, a Jewish history written in Greek in the second or early first century BCE. It describes him as an officer in charge of the Jerusalem Temple who fell out with the high priest Onias III over the administration of the city market.

To get even, Simon went to Apollonius, the Seleucid governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, and reported that the Temple treasury was full of untold sums that did not belong to the sacrifices and could fall into the king's hands. King Seleucus IV then sent his chief minister Heliodorus to seize the money. 2 Maccabees 3 says Heliodorus was stopped by a terrifying horseman and two young men who flogged him in the Temple.

In chapter 4 Simon keeps slandering Onias, accusing him of plotting, and his followers commit murders, until Onias appeals to the king. Simon's tribe is given as Benjamin in the Greek manuscripts; some scholars, following the Latin and Armenian versions, read Bilgah, a priestly family. Nothing more is known of him outside this book.