Joseph of Arimathea: Difference between revisions

Joseph could have even been more than a merchant—a Roman official in the trade. Gildas the Wise, a British monk who lived <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. c. 500–570, refers to him as “nobilis decurio.”<ref>''De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae'', a religious polemic by Gildas, is the only existing written source for the early Christian history of Britain written close to that time.<ref> According to Capt, the title “‘decurio’ denoted an important Roman office, usually connected with the general management of a mining district. The implication is that Joseph was a provincial ... Roman Senator and in charge of Rome’s mining interests in Britain.”<ref>Capt, ''Traditions of Glastonbury'', p. 22.</ref>

<blockquote>[During] the nine years’ persecution by the tyrant Diocletian,... the Churches throughout the whole world were overthrown. All the copies of the Holy Scriptures which could be found were burned in the streets, and the chosen pastors of God’s flock butchered, together with their innocent sheep, in order that (if possible) not a vestige might remain in some provinces of Christ’s religion.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Now the most eminent of the primitive disciples ... was St. Joseph of Arimathea, and eleven of his companions with him, among whom is reckoned his son of his own name. These toward the latter end of Nero’s reign [it ended about <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 68], and before St. Peter and St. Paul were consummated by a glorious martyrdom [about <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 64 and 67], are by the testimony of ancient records said to have entered this island, as a place for the retiredness of it, the benignity to the British Princes, and the freedom from Roman tyranny, more, opportune, and better prepared for entertaining the Gospel of Peace, than almost any country, under the Romans.<ref>Capt, ''Traditions of Glastonbury'', p. 22.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Britain, partly [because of] Joseph of Arimathea,... was of all kingdoms, first, that received the Gospel.</blockquote>

De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie was written by famous historian William of Malmesbury about 1135. He said he based it on “the writing of the ancients,” found in the Glastonbury library before it was destroyed. His chronicle says that St. Philip

<blockquote>... sent twelve of his disciples into Britain to teach the word of life. It is said that he appointed as their leader his very dear friend, Joseph of Arimathea, who had buried the Lord. They came to Britain in 63 AD, the fifteenth year after the assumption of the blessed Mary, and confidently began to preach the faith of Christ. The barbarian king and his people, hearing this new and unfamiliar preaching, refused absolutely to agree with it and would not alter the teachings of their forefathers; yet because they had come from afar, and because the sobriety of their life demanded it of him, the king granted them a certain island on the outskirts of his territory on which they could live, a place surrounded by woods, bramble bushes and marshes and called by its inhabitants Yniswitrin.</blockquote>

John Scott, editor of a William of Malmesbury translation, says that the monks were trying to enhance the prestige of their monastery by establishing an “ancient foundation and a saintly founder.” So they “boldly expanded William’s sober and guarded account. They gave names to the missionaries, who had been unknown to William, and invented a document in which Phagan and Deruvian [missionaries sent by Roman Church hierarch Elutherins in <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 166] recounted the story of the foundation of Glastonbury by the disciples of St. Philip. An even later embellishment ... brought Joseph of Arimathea to Glastonbury as the leader of the missionaries.”  

<blockquote>In the upshot I see no reason to doubt that by 1190 a Celtic Joseph legend, preserved in Wales, had returned to the Abbey, and that this was the common source for [Grail romancer] Robert de Borron and the ''De Antiquitate interpolator''.</blockquote>

::And did the Countenance Divine,<br/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Shine forth upon our clouded hills?<br/>And was Jerusalem builded here,<br/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Among these dark Satanic Mills?  

The first of these is found in Cornwall. In his Book of Cornwall, Baring-Gould reports a “Cornish story ... to the effect that Joseph of Arimathea came in a boat to Cornwall, and brought the Child Jesus with him, and the latter taught him how to extract the tin and purge it of its [ore] wolfram[ite].... When the tin is flashed then the tinner shouts, ‘Joseph was in the tin trade.’”  

The second is a Somerset County tradition describing how Jesus and Joseph came to Summerland on a ship from Tarshish and stayed in Paradise (a place name for areas around Burnham and Glastonbury).  

The third says that Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea stayed in the mining village of Priddy, north of Glastonbury, in the Mendip Hills of Somerset County.  An old saying there is:  “As sure as Our Lord was at Priddy...”  

<blockquote>[Joseph] gained his wealth as an importer in the tin trade, which existed between Cornwall and Phoenicia. On one of his voyages he took Our Lord with him when a boy. Our Lord either remained in Britain or returned later as a young man, and stayed in quiet retirement at Glastonbury. Here he erected for himself a small house of mud and wattle. Later Joseph of Arimathea, fleeing from Palestine, settled in the same place and erected a mud and wattle church.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Isle of Avalon greedy of burials ... received thousands of sleepers, among whom Joseph de Marmore from Aramathea by name, entered his perpetual sleep. And he lies in a bifurcated line next the southern angle of the oratory made of circular wattles by 13 inhabitants of the place over the powerful adorable Virgin.</blockquote>

A reputed sarcophagus of Joseph does exist today in Glastonbury. A fourteenth-century monk, Roget of Boston, recorded an epitaph attached to it found after it was exhumed in 1345. It read in Latin, “To the Britons I came after I buried the Christ. I taught, I have entered my rest.”