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WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY, a careful English historian of the early days, has recorded the legend, preserved through the Middle Ages, that Christianity first came to England when Joseph of Arimathaea was sent by the Apostle Philip from Gaul. Bearing in his custody the Holy Grail, Joseph found in the swamps of Somerset a conspicuous Tor that had a startling resemblance to Mount Tabor in the Holy Land. There he hid the Grail, and built the first Christian sanctuary in these islands of ours, in 63 AD. It is here in this legend "all covered over with a luminous mist" that the Gospel story reaches out a long arm across the distance and makes contact with our land. There may be little of historical truth in the story, though there seems nothing intrinsically improbable in the suggestion that it was Joseph, or relatives of his, that brought the Gospel to England. The Grail is the symbol of the soul's holiest unsatisfied desire. And we place this legend in the forefront here as a symbol of the quest we have set ourselves -to explore, so far as it has been permitted to us, some chapters of the Hidden Romance of the New Testament.
A great Abbey was founded at Glastonbury, where the first Christian church was built, and it was a nourishing religious house in the days when the Crusaders set sail from England under Richard the Lion Heart. The tradition which had grown about the place had no doubt taken a deep hold on the religious mind of the day. And we can imagine the monks of Glastonbury laying a solemn charge upon the knights of the Red Cross to search for relics and recollections of their patron Joseph, when they reached the Holy Land. It is interesting to recall the fact that a large part of Richard's campaigning was undertaken towards Jerusalem, from the port of Jaffa as a base. And they would often traverse the region where Arimathaea lay.
But when the Crusaders returned to England, they had apparently nothing new to tell of Joseph. So for the most part the monks of Glastonbury had to be content with the apparently meagre details of the Gospel story. But were they so meagre after all? We can picture these monks, going over all the details with loving care, to console themselves for their disappointment. And this would be something like the story that would unfold itself before them, concerning him whom they venerated as the founder of their Abbey - "Joseph, the man from Arimathaea."
It is by no means the rule to have names of places attached to the names of persons in the New Testament, and wherever it occurs there is some special significance. Joseph is always called "the man from Arimathaea," and his is almost the only case where the significance of the designation is obscure. Of course it means that Arimathaea was his home at one time or other. And while the probabilities are that it was his ancestral home, it is not impossible that he only settled there in the days beyond the Cross. It may have been to distinguish him from several other Josephs of note in the early Church -Joseph Barnabas, Joseph Barsabbas, or Justus - just as "Iscariot" distinguishes Judas from at least one other in the band of disciples. But why it should have been "of Arimathaea" - an insignificant place - rather than a cognomen such as "Barnabas," still remains obscure. Assuming for the moment that his family belonged to the place, it must have been a family of considerable social status in this "town of the twin hills." Wealthy, too, for Joseph was a man of wealth (Matt.xxvii.57); and the Rabbi's profession was not lucrative. It was he who bought the fine linen grave-clothes in which Jesus' body was wrapped. And perhaps when he made his daring request of Pilate, he had to help the scornful, avaricious Roman to a favourable answer, with a sum of gold. He seems to have owned a piece of land in the outskirts of Jerusalem, beyond the Damascus Gate. It sheltered under the green knoll with its craggy out-cropping of rock which gave it the shape and name of "Skull" - Golgotha.
"Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new-made sepulchre, wherein never man was yet laid."
Joseph had probably hewn that tomb out of the rock, to be his own last resting-place some day. It was honoured by another Guest. "There laid they therefore Jesus." But we are hastening on too fast.
Joseph's parents had evidently means enough and ambition enough to give the boy a liberal education. They sent him to college or the House of the Midrash in Jerusalem. He had been a fine youth, mentally gifted, earnest-souled. Luke describes him in his later years: "a good man and a just" - not only a pious observer of the Law, but a man of lofty character. These two things did not always go together. Many a Pharisee, as Jesus' words about them indicate, was a pedantically scrupulous observer of all the fine points of the Law, but - a whited sepulchre. Joseph's ability is borne testimony to by the fact that he became a Rabbi; and so conspicuous did he become among his fellows that he was in due course elected to the Sanhedrin. He became a councillor, one of the Seventy who not only interpreted but administered the Law. In Judaism at its hey-day, and even under the rule of the Romans, education, politics and religion merged into one another. Education was the study of the Law of Moses: the Law of Moses was the Law of the land: and the observance of the Law was religion. The supreme ambition of the Jew was to become one of the Seventy. We might almost say it meant becoming a college professor, an ecclesiastical leader, and a member of Parliament - or at any rate of the Judicature - all in one. Joseph had reached that coveted position. Mark says he was an "honourable councillor" - a front-bench man, as we might say. And his chief friend in the Council Chamber was Nicodemus, who was a ruler of the Jews - one of the four chief men of the Sanhedrin - one of the Cabinet. These two men, to their everlasting honour, refused to vote with the Council on the momentous occasion when they condemned Jesus to death. Nicodemus protested indeed. Perhaps Joseph, a more youthful councillor, contented himself with silent support.
How was it that Joseph was led to take up this position in the trial of Jesus? The Gospel furnishes us with a considerable part of the answer. For Luke further describes Joseph as one "who also himself waited for the Kingdom of God." Now that is a phrase laden with a touching significance. We find it, or words to the same purpose, more than once in the Gospel story. There is Simeon, "who was waiting for the consolation of Israel" (Lk.ii.25), Anna, who belonged to a circle who "looked for redemption in Jerusalem" (Lk.ii.38), the two on the road to Emmaus, who had been expecting Him "that should redeem Israel"; blameless people like Zacharias and Elizabeth (Lk.i.6), and others. In short, Joseph of Arimathaea, and doubtless his family, belonged to that religious class in Israel, known as the Chasidim. The Chasidim are not a sect, not an organised society. What they represent is a phase of religion, which repeats itself in the religious life of almost every land. They are the devout people, simple, earnest, wistfully expectant, praying people, "the quiet in the land," hidden away often in the hills and the glens; the people who keep the light of real, experimental religion burning through long dry times in the religious history of a nation.
There is almost a perfect parallel in the history of Scotland. During the long twilight of Moderatism which followed the Settlement after the Covenanting days, there sprang up spontaneously, often in remote districts, all over Scotland, what were known as praying circles. People "waiting for the consolation of Israel," we might with perfect aptness describe them. They met in each other's houses. They had no recognised leaders, no programme. But after the day's work, they might be seen straggling in twos or threes along hill-paths, by the side of the burn, or through the woods, as the gloaming gathered quickly, all making for a light that burned brightly in a little cottage window up the glen. They entered the house quietly, hardly even exchanged greeting, spent the evening in praise and prayer and meditation on God's word. And then at the end of the evening, shook hands silently and stole away. Out of these circles came the movements of Secession and Relief, and then the evangelical movement that ended in the Disruption. In the Highlands it took a special aspect, which manifested itself at communion seasons in a body known as "the Men". In its earlier stages, these "Men" were just the bright stars of the Chasidim, the pious in the land. In its later stages, they came to bear a grotesque similarity to an outgrowth of Israel's Chasidim - the Pharisees. "The Men" sometimes became proud, rigid, censorious, self-styled leaders of religion.
Joseph of Arimathaea was brought up in that circle at its best, devout, warm, tender, eagerly waiting people. It is said that only those were admitted into their circle who were cultured - well versed in the sacred Law, - and whose youth had never been denied by sin. This religious upbringing was doubtless the secret of the youth's eagerly enquiring mind, which had led him at College to probe so deeply into his people's Faith; he was waiting for the Kingdom - not in the sense in which people were commonly expecting it, not as a great political uprising, a successful revolt against the powers that be; nor yet as a spectacular intervention of God - a coming in the clouds of heaven, such as another fanatical sect were expecting. He was looking for a quickening of real religion once more in Israel, a time of refreshing, a sound of abundance of rain, a blowing of the breath of the Spirit on the dry bones of the dead formalism of the time, a restoring of the old songs to Sion - laughter and singing and joy, because God had visited His people.
He and his friend Nicodemus must have gone to Jordan to see the great religious revival there under John the Baptiser. And their unrest, their eager waiting, must have grown well-nigh unbearable - until they met Christ at length, and knew in their heart of hearts that what they had longed for was come. There was an air of mingled strangeness, beauty, and fear about this sublimely lowly Man - so simple, so inexorable in His demands upon the soul. And the experience created a terrible problem for these-two men. To come out suddenly and decidedly and openly on the side of the Nazarene meant for both of them the most tremendous sacrifice that life could demand of them. It meant renouncing their calling, status, fame, the highest posts of public honour in the land. Jesus had won them - it was only a matter of time. But for long that inward strife and anguish of soul raged in Joseph's bosom. For of this too we have proof. He was, says Matthew, "a disciple of Jesus"; and the Fourth Evangelist adds the one phrase sadly qualifying that description - "but secretly for fear of the Jews."
The crisis came at last - and the victory. Perhaps it was in the very hour when Jesus was hanging on the Cross. Certainly a few hours later, Joseph's decision was made. Perhaps he was an onlooker, watching from the privacy of his garden, when the Great Tragedy was being enacted on the rocky knoll above. Trembling with excitement he must have passed the hours. It was the end of Jesus. To all human appearance the Cause was lost, the Nazarene discredited for ever and ever - His followers were scattered and fled. Yet it was then that he decided to offer his own tomb, that the body might be reverently interred. Probably it was later - on the road to Emmaus, some have thought - that the light broke, and he said to himself, "Jesus is the Redeemer, the Suffering Servant of God, dying for the sin of many, dying for my craven-heartedness. Here I make an end forever of all my hankering after pride of place and power. My lectures in the House of the Midrash, my seat in the Council, my authority among the citizens of Jerusalem - I fling them all over; I offer them as a humble sacrifice to Thee, who hast made the last great sacrifice for me." And next we see him standing before Pilate with pale but resolute face, begging the despised and execrated body - begging it "with tears and entreaties," says the writer of the Acts of Pilate. And then in the waning light of day, he and his friend and some women assistants find their way back to Calvary, just as the soldiers are finishing their ghastly work, and smashing the legs of the criminals. We know of few more extraordinary, more moving scenes in history than this - two of the proudest in the land breaking the Law of which they were accredited and venerable teachers and administrators, making themselves unclean, putting themselves without the pale, in order to perform the last sad and tender offices of love and reverence for an Outcast, who had died a felon's death. Daring death themselves - and they knew it. In the Acts of Pilate and The Narrative of Joseph, is it not recorded that Joseph was actually imprisoned by his enraged fellow-councillors, with a view to his execution? But Pilate had had enough of blood and Joseph was released.
Such is the story from the Gospel pages, with which the disappointed monks of Glastonbury would comfort themselves, when the Crusaders returned bearing no relics or traditions about the great founder of their Abbey, to delight their hearts. And we would turn back now for a moment from following the fortunes of Joseph of Arimathaea, to join the company in Glastonbury Abbey once again. When the monks had consoled themselves in some such way as we have suggested, they must have begun to recall a story which the Crusaders had told them, and put a great deal of excitement and enthusiasm into the telling. It was a story to which the soldiers of Richard had listened many a time when they lay in the tented fields round Lydda, the little town a few miles inland from the port of Joppa, where their great commander had his headquarters. And this is how it goes.
About the year 303 AD, when the Roman Emperor Diocletian issued his edict, ordering all the Christian churches to be burned, and their sacred books to be destroyed, a military tribune named Georgios, a man of good birth, a Christian, tore down the edict and suffered the penalty of death in consequence.
It was the eve of the triumph of Christianity. And the prevailing tradition points to the town of Lydda, as the place where the deed was wrought. It is not far from the reputed site where - in the ancient myth - Perseus slew the dragon and rescued Andromeda. It was natural that the soldier Georgios should come to be known as the slayer of the dragon of Paganism; one of the champions to whose martyr blood the victory of "the Galilean" is due. The Crusaders told the story, and said that on one occasion they were saved from disaster by; the intervention of this martyr saint. By-and-by; the story became so familiar and popular, that it was only a step to making him the patron saint of England - St. George, who slew the dragon.
We can imagine the monks of Glastonbury turning this story over in their minds, in the dim hope that they might be able to connect it with their own. It is certain that the two stories reached the zenith of their vigour as a result of the Crusades. And it is certain that the monks would begin to make eager enquiries about this town of Lydda, which lay, as they noted, not so many miles away from the reputed site of Arimathaea. What is the history of this town; and has the New Testament anything to say about it?
Josephus, the Jewish historian, describes it as "a village not less than a city." It lay on the Eastern edge of the great plain of Sharon, near where the foothills begin to rise towards the mountains of Judaea. It was a frontier town. The land of Israel and the seaboard land of the Philistines, Israel's hereditary enemies, met at this place. It must have been in part an industrial town. The region in which it lay was known as the Valley of the Smiths - a fact reminiscent of the time when Israel learned by bitter experience to grind her own axes, and not to be dependent on her enemies (l Sam.xili.19). But it was also a flourishing commercial town - a centre of the purple trade. For it stood at a great crossroads, where the immemorial caravan route from Egypt to Damascus and the East crossed the road from the port of Joppa to the Jewish capital.
It is easy to understand the strong nationalism of the citizens of this town. It was one of the hot-beds of revolution against the rule of Rome before the great outbreak that ended in the destruction of the Holy City. Its citizens had been sold into slavery in 44 BC, for refusing to pay the Roman levies. They were liberated by Antony, but the memory rankled. Cestius Gallus burnt it in the reign of Nero. Vespasian captured it in the year 68 AD. It was natural that so patriotic a place should become one of the chief seats of the College of Rabbis, after the fall of Jerusalem.
To this day there is a Christian congregation at Lydda. The revolutionary Faith found a ready soil in the revolutionary town. The Christian community there seems to have made its influence felt in a very marked way on the life of the town - propagandists, zealous even to the point of fanaticism, proclaiming their message at the street-corners, on the house-tops, anywhere. There is one reluctant and curious testimony to the power of Christianity there. The Talmudists who settled in Lydda were irritated into making scornful reference to the sect. In the Talmud's careless and hazy allusion, Lydda is the place where the new sect sprang into being. It suggests that Lydda had been the home of Jesus and His mother Mary, upon whom it casts an unworthy aspersion. It says Lydda is the place where, "on the eve of Pascha" - a corroboration of the synoptic narrative - Jesus was condemned to death. The value of a report so malicious is that it proves the strength of the Christian community in Lydda at an early period of the Church's history. And probably the later references to the wretchedness and waywardness of Lydda are an indirect and spiteful tribute to the Church's ever-growing power. Lydda, in fact, seems to have become one of the main centres of Palestinian Christianity. Even Mahomet is said to have prophesied that "Isa (Jesus) will slay Antichrist at the Gate of the Church of Lydda."
Now open the New Testament at the book of "the Acts," and you will find that there was a widespread accession to the Christian Faith when the Apostle Peter visited the town (Acts ix.35). But you will find there also that it was not the Apostle who first proclaimed the Cross of Christ at Lydda. For Luke tells us that he came down on that occasion "to the saints which dwelt at Lydda." Who, then, was the Church's founder? It may be that Philip the Evangelist had laboured there. But there is reason for believing that the Church in Lydda had an older origin still. Christ's first followers hailed from all parts of the Holy Land. We read of two in the Gospel story who had their home in Emmaus, not very far away. Tabitha, who lived a few miles further down in Joppa, is called a " disciple." And that probably means that she was one of the women followers of Jesus in the days of His flesh. And it is extremely likely that the wealthy Cypriote Mnason, who entertained Paul on his last momentous journey from Caesarea to Jerusalem, had settled in Lydda. Luke calls him "a disciple of the beginning," and he probably means that Mnason had also been a follower of Jesus. Aeneas, whom Peter healed, was doubtless one of " the saints which dwelt at Lydda," and from the word which Peter spoke to him, it seems possible that he too had known the Prophet of Galilee.
The monks in Glastonbury would ponder over all these things, until they suddenly realised that Arimathaea, the town of their own patron, lay not so far away. What if Joseph of Arimathaea had had something to do with the founding of the Church at Lydda?
And with this surmisal in their minds they would go back to Joseph's story. Where would Joseph have gone, after that momentous day when he had resigned everything to follow Christ? His old associates in the Sanhedrin would have made life intolerable for him in the ancient capital. Does not the very title by which he was always known in the early Church suggest that it was back to Arimathaea? And surely a man who had made such a tremendous renunciation could not possibly have remained a mere passive disciple. We may be certain that he became an evangelist of flaming zeal. He must have wandered through all the region round Arimathaea telling his story. May not this be the explanation of the title that the early Christians always gave him? He would be familiarly known by the Christians among whom he laboured as "the man from Arimathaea." And the busy little excitable town not so many miles away would not have been passed by. It cannot be thought incredible that this enthusiastic church may have owed its origin, under God's Spirit, to the great self-consecration of Joseph of Arimathaea. Nor yet that in later days he would have carried his evangelistic zeal into wider fields. It is at the instigation of Philip that he is said to have visited the Western lands of Europe. He may have passed through Rome and seen the aged Paul. Indeed, if Paul was liberated, and fulfilled his ambition to visit Spain, Joseph may have been in his company. It may have been to satisfy the longing of the frail, worn Apostle of the Gentiles that, if the tradition be correct, he crossed to Britain, carrying the Gospel to the "islands of the sea."
How did he come to confess his allegiance to Christ? How did he come to join himself to the disciples? He was the man who buried the dead body of the Master; the man who associated himself with the ministering women in their last pious service for their Lord. He must have learned from them where the disciples were mourning, in the seclusion of the Upper Room - if, indeed, he had not known it before. Surely he must have sought them out now, to tell them what he had done, and to confess at last his long-hidden love for Jesus. Tender and sacred must the interview have been. His tale must have brought some consolation to the weeping disciples. And when they had heard him out and welcomed him to their company, he must have listened in his turn to the story they had to tell. Brokenly they must have recalled the memories of their Lord, until they came to the most recent and most intimate of them all - the memory of the Last Supper. Mingling again with their tears and sighs would come the great and wonderful words of love and sacrifice which their Lord had spoken at that table; and then the story of the broken bread - the symbol of His body broken - and of the passing of the Cup of Communion, the Cup of blessing - the freely shared Forgiveness of God. That must have been the hour when the eyes of Joseph's heart began to grow clearer, and to behold in radiant and ecstatic vision the Divine meaning of it all.
Need we hesitate so very much to add one last touch to the picture? "See," we fancy we hear the disciples saying to Joseph, "here is the Cup, the very Cup the Master sanctified to holiest service. It is for ever sacred to us, and we fear to lose it. Who should preserve it but thou, Joseph, who hast done the last reverence to the Master, washing the blood-stains from the broken body, ere thou didst lay it in thy grave?"
The very Cup! What a priceless treasure to possess! "This cup," said Jesus, "is the new Covenant in my blood which is shed for many." To Joseph it must have been the thrice-sacred memorial of the end of his long search for the Kingdom of Heaven, the vision of God! That Cup is the Christian Holy Grail! Buried in the soil of England, the ancient legend has it. Mingled and overlaid, indeed, with fragments of Celtic mythology, it has, nevertheless, become one of the most splendid symbols in all the noblest dreams of our country's literature, which is the voice of our country's soul. Sir Galahad, "the purest knight of Arthur's Table Round," made the search for it his life-long quest, and was granted at last to see it in sacramental vision. Fiction or fact, the story of this holy vessel stands there at the dawn of England's religious history, a sacred ideal, a dream that links our faith inseparably and immediately with the Cross. The story of Joseph of Arimathaea should always be to us a memorial and inspiration of the Beatific Vision that is granted to the pure in heart, a dream of splendour that we shall one day meet with face to face when we have purified ourselves even as Christ is pure.
Let it also be to us a symbol beckoning us in our adventure of exploration along the hidden ways that run through the land of the New Testament. And if we do not always reach a satisfying end to our quest, we may, like the Crusaders, bring back some fragments of the Church's early past, worthy to be set alongside the story of England's patron saint, St. George.