Joseph of Arimathea Biography

St. Joseph of Arimathea is a biblical figure who has been mentioned in all the four gospels of the New Testament. Interestingly, the place Arimathea that is associated with Joseph has not been documented properly. Luke 23:51 mentions it as "a town of Judea." However, Arimathea later came to known as either Ramleh or Ramathaim-Zophim, mentioned in 1 Samuel chapter 19.

Joseph was one of Jesus’s secret disciples. Apparently, when Jesus was crucified, Joseph wanted to prevent his body from being hung on the cross the entire night. He thus asked Pontius Pilate if he could get Jesus’s body down and give him a proper burial (John 19:38).

Mark 15:43 and Luke 23:50 state Joseph was a “member of the council,” meaning he could have been a member of the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem but did not participate in the council’s decision to crucify Jesus.

Once he was granted the permission to bury Jesus, Joseph bought a linen shroud (Mark 15:46) and walked toward Golgotha to take Jesus’s body down from the cross. John 19:39-40 states that Joseph was then helped by Nicodemus in bathing the body in spices (myrrh and aloes) that Nicodemus had purchased and wrapping the body in linen cloth.

They then took the body to a man-made cave. The tomb was meant for Joseph’s own burial (Matthew 27:60). Jesus’s burial was hastily completed, as "the Sabbath was drawing on.” Joseph thus went against the Jewish law that only allowed a disgraceful burial to anybody who was executed. They then covered the entrance of the tomb with a stone.

With time, the story of Joseph of Arimathea has been told and retold. It has thus given rise to a number of legends. The two most prominent ones of them are one that states he visited England with Jesus and another that says he carried the Holy Grail with him to Somerset and set up the first Christian church there.

Closely associated with the first legend is the story that Joseph was related to Jesus. This story could have originated from the tradition of giving away the body of a crucified person to a senior male relative. Jesus's father was not in the picture.

Thus, it is assumed that Joseph of Arimathea, who took care of the corpse was actually Mary’s uncle and Jesus’s great-uncle.

Legends also state that when Joseph took a teenaged Jesus with him to England, they visited many places, such as St. Just in Roseland and St Michael's Mount. Joseph then set up what is known as the first Christian church.

However, the version that is oft-repeated is the one that states Joseph became a missionary after Jesus’s death and was sent to preach in England. He carried the Holy Grail (and his pilgrim’s staff) with him.

After reaching England, he struck the ground at Wearyall Hill with his staff, and the place yielded a flowering thorn tree overnight. The “Glastonbury Thorn,” named after the place, is a type of hawthorn that blooms twice a year, in winter and in spring, or at Christmas and Easter.

Another version states that Joseph brought two vials, that carried the blood and sweat of Jesus, to England. John of Glastonbury, who wrote a chronicle of the Glastonbury Abbey in 1350 stated this version. The blood and sweat of Jesus were an indirect reference to the Grail.

It is also believed that Joseph hid the Grail inside a well at Glastonbury, which is now known as the “Chalice Well.”

Over time, Joseph converted a lot of people to Christianity. A legend states he once converted 18,000 people in a single day in Wells. He converted the local ruler Ethelbert, too. Joseph also founded the Glastonbury Abbey.

Sabine Baring-Gould spoke of a Cornish legend that stated how Joseph of Arimathea took a boat to Cornwall, taking a young Jesus with him. They then extracted tin. This story could have had its origins in the fact that the Jews ruled by the Angevin kings farmed the tin found in Cornwall.

Another modified version of this legend states that Joseph was a merchant who had gone to England to buy Cornish tin, accompanied by Jesus, his nephew.

Another legend, found in Flores Historiarum stated that Joseph was the “Wandering Jew,” a man who had been cursed by Jesus to walk on the Earth until the “Second Coming.”

Many Christians believe Joseph was just fulfilling the prediction mentioned in Isaiah 53:9 that stated that the "Suffering Servant" would be put to his grave by a rich man.

Legends also state that Joseph died at 86 and his funeral had six kings carrying his body.

The apocryphal Gospel of Peter (from the 2nd century), mentions that Joseph was a friend of both Jesus and Pilate.

The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (also known as the Acts of Pilate, from the 4th or 5th century), mentions how the Jewish elders, angry with Joseph for burying Jesus, imprisoned him and sealed his cell door. When the elders got back to the cell, they did not find Joseph, though the seal was still in its place. The elders later found out that Joseph had gone back to Arimathea. When the elders wrote to him, Joseph went back to Jerusalem and told them how Jesus had visited him in his cell and released him. Joseph thus became the first to witness the “Resurrection.”

The verse romance Joseph d’Arimathie by Robert de Boron (1200) was one of the first to mention how Joseph was the one who carried the Holy Grail of the Last Supper.

In the mid-13th-century, an addition made to this mentioned Joseph’s visit to Glastonbury (in Somerset, England) as the head of 12 missionaries sent there to preach by St. Philip the Apostle.

Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (from the 15th century) mentioned that when Galahad had the vision of the Grail, he saw Joseph dressed as a bishop at the altar.

Many literary pieces mention Joseph’s visit to England. One of them is a poem by William Blake, known as Jerusalem. Contemporary troubadour Van Morrison composed the song Summertime in England, based on the same legend.

Church historians such as Irenaeus (125–189), Tertullian (155–222), Hippolytus (170–236), and Eusebius (260–340), also mentioned Joseph.

Joseph is also found in the works of Hilary of Poitiers (300–367) and Saint John Chrysostom (347–407), the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Historians have found no record or mention of Joseph of Arimathea until the 13th century. Thus, some believe Joseph was deliberately associated with Glastonbury to elevate the status of the place.

The “Glastonbury Thorn” that blooms in the yard of the St John's Church of Glastonbury is used to adorn the breakfast table of the Queen every Christmas. A stained-glass window at the St John's Church showcases Joseph of Arimathea.

The Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and a few Protestant churches venerate him as a saint. According to the traditional Roman calendar, his (Western) feast day is March 17. However, he is also listed in the Martyrologium Romanum on August 31, along with Saint Nicodemus.

His Eastern feast day is celebrated on July 31. The Eastern Orthodox churches also commemorate him on the third Sunday of Pascha (which is the second Sunday after Easter).

He is not part of the liturgical calendar of the Church of England, although he appears on the calendars of some Anglican churches, such as the Episcopal Church, which remembers him on August 1.