Joseph of Arimathea: Difference between revisions

According to Hardyng’s Chronicle (a fifteenth-century document based on a much earlier work), Arviragus granted “twelve hides” of land—somewhere around 1,900 acres—tax-free to Joseph and his company in a place called Yniswitrin, a marshy tract later called the Isle of Avalon.  

Partial confirmation of this royal charter was found in the official Domesday Book, the record of a massive economic survey made for tax purposes by order of William the Conqueror in 1086. It says:  

“The Domus Dei, in the great monastery of Glastonbury, called The Secret of the Lord. This Glastonbury Church possesses in its own ville XII hides of land which have never paid tax.”

In his Traditions of Glastonbury, E. Raymond Capt wrote that these pilgrims ...

“... 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 about <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 540, historian Maelgwyn of Avalon wrote in his Historia de Rubus Britannicis:  

“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.”

Another story is that King Arthur was related to Joseph of Arimathea. Reverend Lewis in his book St. Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury quotes historian John of Glastonbury, who traces the lineage of Arthur through his mother, Ygerna, to her father and grandfather, Lambord, to Manuel, Castellors, Aminadab, Josue, and finally back to Helaios—the “Nepos” of Joseph. According to Lewis, “One should add that, while ‘Nepos’ often means grandson, it may merely mean kinsman.... It is said that every one of the twelve Knights of the Round Table was descended from St. Joseph.”  

“‘The Recognitions of Clement’—a 2nd-century document tainted with Ebionite errors, probably based on an account by St. Clement of Rome (so Rufinus, who translated it in <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 410, thought) describes St. Barnabus and St. Clement going to Caesarea and finding there, among others, SS. Peter, Lazarus, the Holy Women, and St. Joseph of Arimathea! Here we find not only St. Joseph but some of the group whom we find later in the boat.”

“After the first persecution, when St. James was slain by the sword, those who had followed him were thrust into a boat, without oars or sails, on the coast of Palestine somewhere near to Mount Carmel, and so got rid of. In the boat were: St. Mary, wife of Cleopas, St. Salome (often called St. Mary Salome also), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha, and with the two latter was their maid Marcella. They were accompanied by the following men: Lazarus, Joseph of Arimathea, Trophimius, Maximin, Cleon, Eutropius, Sidonius (Restitutus, ‘the man born blind’), Martial, and Saturnius.”

“Leaving the shores of Asia ... they came near to the city of Marseilles, in the Viennoise Province of Gaul, where the river Rhone is received by the sea. There, having called upon God, the King of all the world, they parted; each company going to the province where the Holy Spirit had directed them; presently preaching everywhere, ‘the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.’”

“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.” 

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.  

Sabellius, an early Roman Christian theologian, <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 250, wrote: “Christianity was privately confessed elsewhere, but the (first) nation that proclaimed it as their religion and (called it Christian) after the name of Christ was Britain.” 

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.”

Saint Hilary of Poitiers, who lived 300 to 367, wrote: “Afterwards the Apostles built several tabernacles, and through all the parts of the earth wherever it was possible to go; even in the Isles of the ocean they built several habitations for God.”

“The British Isles which are beyond the sea, and which lie in the ocean, have received virtue of the Word. Churches are there found and altars erected.... Though thou shouldst go to the ocean, to the British Isles, there thou shouldst hear all men everywhere discoursing matters out of the scriptures, with another voice indeed, but not another faith, with a different tongue, but the same judgment.”

“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.”

“[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.”

“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.”

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.”

William of Malmesbury [H3]

“... 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.”

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.”

“[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.”

But why would Joseph bring Jesus? If Joseph of Arimathea had been Mary’s uncle, it is a good possibility that he would have become Jesus’ legal guardian upon the passing of Joseph, his father. If Joseph had been Jesus’ guardian and also an official in the Roman-British tin trade, it is certainly possible he would have taken his nephew with him when he travelled on business.

“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.”