Joseph of Arimathea: Difference between revisions

As soon as Jesus was dead, Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. He also happened to have an empty tomb nearby the place of the crucifixion. Pilate, knowing that the crucifixion took a long time, was astonished that Jesus was already dead. Pilate sent for the centurion who was in charge of the execution. When Pilate confirmed that Jesus was dead he released the body to Joseph.  

However, beyond the Biblical account, the myths, legends, and traditions of Joseph are many and widespread.

Extensive writings about Joseph of Arimathea are found in the medieval romances of the Holy Grail. Legend has it that Joseph took the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and brought it to Glastonbury, which was then an island in southwest England. There is little explanation for the fact that the earliest surviving versions of these stories date from the twelfth century. To some, this sudden appearance sounds like a simple invention by medieval bards, just another romanticization attached to King Arthur. While this may be true, there is a body of evidence—archaeological fact, ancient legend, and tradition—which is hard to dismiss as pure make-believe.  

When the Roman soldier Longinus pierced Jesus’ side with a lance, Joseph raised the cup and caught the sacred blood which flowed from the wound. (According to John 19:34, there flowed therefrom water and blood.) Joseph preserved the cup and its contents, and the Grail became his guardian and comforter.

Most of the authors of the Grail romances cite earlier manuscripts as their sources. There are no written sources extant, but there is evidence—hints from other works—that sources existed. Most of the authors cite earlier manuscripts as their sources.  

“The Latin from whence this history was drawn into Romance was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenievre lie, according to the witness of the good men religious that are therein, that have the whole history thereof, true from the beginning  even to the end.”  

Reverend Lionel Smithett Lewis, late vicar of Glastonbury, wrote:  

In the thirteenth century, Helinandus of Froidmont made a convincing citation:

“... erected what must have been the first Christian Church above ground. These early hutments would have been made from wattle daubed with mud and built in a circular form. From studies made by the late F. Bligh Bond, F.R.I.B.A. (member of the Somerset Archaeological Society and formerly director of excavations at Glastonbury Abbey) the first church was circular, having a diameter of 25 feet, with the twelve huts of the other disciples forming a circle around it.”  

“In this church they worshipped and taught the people the true Christian faith. After about fifteen years Mary died and was buried at Glastonbury. The disciples died in succession and were buried in the cemetery.”  

A second-century document places Joseph of Arimathea in Caesarea, legendary point of departure for his journey to Britain. Reverend Lewis wrote:

If the apostles were not the ones scattered, then who was? Traditions from Britain to the Mediterranean to India say it was the early saints—those who had been close to the Lord and part of his mission. A local tradition in Provence, France, tells of the scattering of a small group, among them Joseph of Arimathea. It says they sailed to Marseilles.

There is additional evidence of the saints’ ministry in France. According to the Acts of Magdalen, Lazarus stayed in Marseilles, Mary Magdalene went to Aix-en-Provence with St. Maximin, and Martha went to Tarascon. This is corroborated by local tradition. Beneath the old church of St. Victor in Marseilles is a natural cave which is reputed to be Lazarus’ refuge. Near Aix, a relic of Mary is preserved in the Basilica of Mary Magdalene at Saint–Maximin.

Traditions of the other saints are scattered along the Rhône valley, but nowhere is there an account of Joseph’s settling there. The traditions place him in Britain. They also give a reason for his continuing the journey after his companions had settled.

== Connection with the tin trade ==

Capt avers that the tradition is fairly ancient and widespread, noting that the children of Priddy, a hill village near the mines of the Mendips, sing a carol that begins: “‘Joseph was a tin merchant, a tin merchant, a tin merchant’, and goes on to describe him arriving from the sea in a boat.”  

“They that inhabit the British promontory of Belerium, by reason of their converse with merchants, are more civilized and courteous to strangers than the rest are. These are the people that make the tin, which with a great deal of care and labour they dig out of the ground; and that being rocky, the metal is mixed with some veins of earth, out of which they melt the metal, and then refine it; then they beat it into four-square pieces like to a dye, and carry it to a British isle near at hand, called Ictis.”  

“The merchants transport the tin they buy of the inhabitants to France; and for thirty days journey, they transport it on horses’ backs through France, to the mouth of the river Rhone.”   

The traditions of Joseph in Cornwall and the mining districts do not point to any permanent resting place. The weight of evidence says his ministry was in Glastonbury, site of an ancient Christian abbey, home of Grail legends and, incidentally, only twelve miles from the site some archaeologists favor as Arthur’s castle—Cadbury.

Glastonbury was first called “Ynis-witrin”—the “Glassy Island.” It was later found to be an excellent area to cultivate apples, and was then called “Insula Avalonia” after the Welsh word for apple—Aval.  

The Glastonbury village was probably related to the tin trade. Capt says that metal mined in the Mendip Hills above Glastonbury was placed on small boats to be floated down the river Brue. Therefore “the lake villages of Glastonbury would have been a natural stop-over for trading.”  

Tertullian, who lived about 160 to 230, wrote that “the extremities of Spain, the various parts of Gaul, the regions of Britain which have never been penetrated by Roman arms have received the religion of Christ.”  Glastonbury fits Tertullian’s specification. It was in a region held by the British which had escaped the Roman conquest of Julius Caesar.

Eusebius (c. 260 to 340), bishop of Caesarea and father of ecclesiastical history, wrote: “The Apostles passed beyond the ocean to the isles called the Britannic Isles.”  

“These islands, stiff with cold and frost, and in distant region of the world, remote from the visible sun received the beams of light, that is the holy precepts of Christ, at the latter part, as we know, of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.”  

== Manuscript evidence for Joseph of Arimathea in Britain ==

“[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.”  

Cressy continues:

Polydore Vergil, the sixteenth-century Italian historian who travelled to Britain and published an accurate history of England entitled Anglicae Historiae Libri, wrote: “Britain, partly [because of] Joseph of Arimathea,... was of all kingdoms, first, that received the Gospel.”  

Although William of Malmesbury is considered a reliable historian, quite a bit of scholarly dispute has raged over this and other passages of his work relating to Joseph. Most historians agree that the mention of a Joseph was a later interpolation by the Glastonbury monks. However, they differ on the monks’ motive.

However, not all scholars agree with this interpretation. Geoffrey Ashe says that an interpolation does not preclude the veracity of the statement. He wrote, “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.”  

The belief that Jesus went to England is a persistent one. William Blake, the English poet (1757–1827), conveys this belief in a poem that has been sung as a hymn.  

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.’”