Preamble
The view that Christianity was first brought to Britain in 597AD by the Papal missionary, Augustine is fundamentally wrong, the evidence points elsewhere. Gildas, the early British Historian (516-570AD) wrote; meanwhile, these islands … received the beams of light that is, the Holy precepts of Christ, the true Sun at the latter part, as we know, of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.
Tiberius was Emperor at the time of the crucifixion; his reign ended in 37AD. Accordingly …in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius Caesar shows that Christianity arrived in Britain prior to 37AD.
That the Gospel was brought to the British Isles early in 1st Century is confirmed by the discovery of two medals bearing effigies without a halo. One was found at Cork in 1812, under the foundation of one of the first Christian monasteries built in Ireland, the other under the ruin of a Druidical Circle in Anglesey about the same time.
Historians inform us that the Hebrew letter Aleph to the right of the effigy on the face side of one of the medals shows the date; other letters signify Jesus on the left. The word, Messias is on the edge. The reverse has the inscription: Messiah the Prince came in peace, and man, life for man became. The second medal reads: Nought in Thee was found worthy of Divine Wrath. The inscriptions were in Aramaic. (Roberts: British History Traced from Egypt and Palestine.)
Polydore Vergil, and later Cardinal Pole, (1555) both of the Catholic Church, confirmed in Parliament that Britain was the first of all countries to receive the Christian faith. Gilbert Genebrard (1535-1597) the French Benedictine and later Archbishop of Aix remarked, The glory of Britain consists not only in this, that she was the first country which in a national capacity publicly professed herself Christian but that she made this confession when the Roman Empire itself was pagan and a real persecutor of Christianity.
British primacy was only once questioned on political grounds by the Ambassadors of France and Spain, at the Council of Pisa in 1417. The Council affirmed the precedence as established. Both Ambassadors appealed to the Council of Constance in 1419, which confirmed the decision of Pisa, which was a third time confirmed by the Council of Siena in 1423. It was again ruled at the Council of Basle in 1431 that the British Church took pre-eminence over all others of the Christian faith, having been founded by Joseph of Arimathea directly after the Resurrection of Christ. Sent by the Apostle Phillip, Joseph went to Britain 289 years before Constantine convened the First Council at Nicaea.
In his Three Conversions of England (1603) the Jesuit, Robert Parsons acknowledged in agreement with the majority of Roman Catholic writers, Christianity came into Britain from Jerusalem soon after the Christ was crucified. Sabellius, a theologian of the 3rd Century said; Christianity was privately confessed elsewhere, but the first nation that proclaimed it as their religion, called itself Christian after the name of Christ, was Britain. That it is the Arimathean who is named, he who approached Pontius Pilot, and interred the body of Jesus after the crucifixion, that he later brought the Gospel to Britain is no coincidence, as many are of the opinion that Joseph was the uncle of Mary and therefore great-uncle to Jesus.
As a close relative, Joseph would have been required by law and tradition, to act as warden to Mary’s children after her husband’s premature death. According to the Harlein Manuscripts (housed in the British Museum) Joseph was the younger brother of Mary’s father. Matthew records it was Joseph who asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. With help from the Apostle John, they placed Jesus in the burial place he had set aside for himself. This seems a risky thing to have done, to show reverence to the remains of one so bitterly despised by the Sanhedrin and the Jews who bayed for His death.
For any offender executed under the law, cemeteries were set aside away from the city. Jesus could have been quietly buried outside the gates, and no one need declare a responsibility. But that’s not what happened. A man came forward and openly showed respect and affection for the body of Jesus as a relative would have done.
Threatened with an uprising, Pontius Pilot had grudgingly given permission for the crucifixion of Jesus, after adjudging Him innocent. Having carried out this act of acquiescence, it is unlikely he would have then authorised a private burial for Jesus, if Jewish authorities had not agreed. Under both Jewish and Roman law, it was the responsibility of the closest relative to provide for burial, regardless of the circumstances or manner of death. Despite extreme prejudice, permission could hardly be refused to an uncle wishing to bury his nephew. Fortunately, Joseph was well placed. As a Minister of Mines, (Nobilis Decurio) he had direct access to Pilot. As a voting (and wealthy) member of the Sanhedrin, access to the body of Jesus for entombment would have been quickly approved. God leaves nothing to chance. Joseph of Arimathea, the great uncle and secret disciple of Jesus, was the perfect man for this work of the LORD.
Joseph’s British Connection
It is well known that a metal trade between Britain and the Near East had existed for some time. England’s richest tin mines were in Cornwall; Somerset held rich deposits of copper and lead. Diodorus Siculus provided details of regular routes taken by sea and land for its transfer to the Holy Land. After the tin was prepared for transport, it was taken to the small island of Ictis, which at low tide was connected to the mainland by a narrow path; locals knew it as St. Michael’s Mount. The cargo was taken from Ictis to Morlaix, travelled overland to what is now Marseilles and then shipped to Tyre. Stories of Joseph of Arimathea exist at several places along this ancient route.
Joseph certainly knew the way to Britain. Having been a regular visitor and a man of considerable means, he became respected among British and Welsh high chieftains and kings. Joseph was well acquainted with Kings Beli, Lud, and Llyr. Recorded in the Doomsday Book, King Arviragus, donated 2000 acres of tax free land to Joseph and his companions after being sent by Phillip, which shows the high regard in which he was held. Joseph had a good relationship with King Caradoc, and baptised all of his children into the new faith.
There is a long tradition Joseph was connected with Marazion (bitter Zion) when he and other Jews (not that Joseph was a Jew in the Pauline sense) traded with the tin miners in Cornwall. (The Guide to Penzance) A saying, still in use today, Market Jew originated from a settlement of Jews who traded in tin. Jew’s houses, Jew’s tin, Jew’s leavings and Jew’s pieces are still common terms in Cornwall. (Glastonbury: Her Saints) Among the old tin workers, who have always observed a certain mystery in their rites, there was a moment when they ceased their work and started singing a quaint old song beginning; Joseph was a tin Merchant. (S-Lewis: Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury)
Not only were Britons the first to recognise Christianity, but the evidence shows Glastonbury was the location for the first Christian Church structure, built by Joseph and his fellow disciples; These men, with praises built a church of wattles. (The Doomsday Book) Vatican Historian, Cardinal Baronius (1538-1607) known for his Ecclesiastical archives and the first to coin the phrase, the Dark Ages, discovered a manuscript telling of Joseph, Lazarus, Martha, Mary and others landing at Marseilles in 35AD. This agrees with William of Malmesbury writing of Joseph; who attended the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion and with eleven missionaries under his charge, came to Britain from France having been sent by Phillip the Apostle. The journey of Joseph can be followed from Palestine, via Gaul and Marseilles into Britain. (Roberts: The Early British Church)
Early Welsh poet and historian, Maelgwyn of Llandaff (450AD) stated, Joseph was buried at Avalon. Known as the Isle of Avalon, Glastonbury was for many centuries seen as the most sacred place in all Britain. The ruins of the Abbey stand on the site of the original wattle church; its location has been a place of reverence since the mid first Century. The following extracts speak of Avalon’s prominence in Christian Church history, not only in Britain, but the world:
It is certain Britain received the faith in the first age from the first sowers of the Word. Of all the Churches whose origin I have investigated in Britain, the Church at Glastonbury is the most ancient. (Sir Henry Spelman)
The British National Church was founded A.D. 36, 160 years before heathen Rome confessed Christianity. The Mother Church of the British Isles is the Church in Insula Avallonia, called by the Saxons, Glaston. (Archbishop Ussher)
The church of Avalon in Britain had no other hands than those of the disciples of the Lord themselves built. (Publius Disciplius)
It is not too much to say that the site of St. Mary’s church in the abbey grounds at Glastonbury is the site of the first known above-ground church in the world. (Theodore Martin-Lovar)
The next to arrive in Britain, Simon Zelotes, a.k.a, Simon the Canaanite (to set him apart from Simon Peter) was one of the original twelve and thought to be the brother of, Nathanael. Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre 303AD, confirms Simon preached along the North Coast of Africa and then crossed into Britain. ¹Aristobulus, a member of the newly established Church in Rome, was known to the Apostle Paul and a friend of the emperor, Claudius. The memory of many martyrs is celebrated by the Britons, especially that of St. Aristobulus, one of the seventy disciples. Aristobulus, Cyndav and his son, Mawan, men of Israel, came from Rome with Bran the Blessed to teach the faith of Christ to the race of the Cymry. (The Welsh) (Haleca, Bishop of Augusta) And Dorotheus adds: Aristobulus, who is mentioned by the Apostle, was made Bishop in Britain.
¹Aristobulus is believed the brother of Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipater. If this is the case, the loyalties of brother and sister clearly lay in opposing camps. Herodias attempted to kill the Gospel by asking for the head of John the Baptist, yet her brother promoted the Gospel and became Britain’s first Bishop. His Roman connection certainly adds weight to the claim, as the Herodians and Rome had a long-standing relationship going back to Herod the Great.
Such was the energy of its early converts; British missionaries founded Churches in France, Lorraine and Switzerland. Britain’s religious institutions were immense. William of Malmesbury describes the ruins of Bangor Abbey in his days, as those of a city. St Albans and Glastonbury maintained their dominance until the 16th Century. Of all the great monasteries these were the most popular, revered as significant places at the heart of Britain. Allowing 120 years for spreading the Gospel, and the conversion of a nation, all authorities agree that a National Christian Church was well established by the middle of the 2nd Century.
Therefore, 597AD and the arrival of Augustine, was not the date for the arrival of Christianity, rather the year Rome sent its tainted Gospel to the Isles; the truth of Christ having been planted directly after His resurrection, some 560 years earlier.
Of all European countries, Britain was least influenced by the Papacy. Two of England’s greatest defenders of the faith were Elizabeth the First, and despite what you may believe about him, Henry the Eighth. The first Pope to set foot on British soil did so only recently, in 1982; Pope John Paul.
The Druids
It is rather obvious; Roman historians were notorious for spinning history in their favour and one example concerns the Druids of Britain. Pupils today are taught a version of ancient British history pretty much invented; and what was instigated by Roman historians was soon locked in place by the Church. That Latin is the basis of many common words and phrases shows Rome’s influence on, not only the Church, but language and higher learning. Britain, like many countries once under the yoke of Rome, is now uncovering a different history to that once assumed; beginning to see a past more in line with what actually happened. The actual history of the British Druids for instance, bears little resemblance to the stories the Romans gave us.
The stories of the atrocities of the Druids were mere inventions of the Romans to cover their own cruelty, and to excuse it. The religion of a people who were so mild and merciful not even to imprison their debtors, as did the Romans, could not be bloody. (Early English History: J P Yeatman)
In his work: Religions of Britain, Charles Hulbert writes; the charge of staining their consecrated places with human blood and offering upon the altar of Cor-Gawr or Stonehenge, human victims, hath no real foundation in fact; an accusation as wicked as unjust. So near is the resemblance between the Druidical religion of Britain and the Patriarchal religion of the Hebrews that we hesitate not to pronounce their origin the same.
The dress of the druids was white, and that of the druid in his habit of ceremonial judgement was very grand. On his head he wore a golden tiara and a breastplate of judgement encircled his neck. Their meetings were held in conspicuous places in the open air, and while the sun was above the horizon, for their laws forbade their performing these ceremonies in his absence. The premier bard stood in the centre, by the side of a large stone.
This circle was called the circle of the federation; the large centre stone was known as, the stone of the covenant. Upon the stone altars occasionally blazed a large fire, the sacred emblem of that true God who once manifested his presence, by a bush and a pillar of fire, whose tremendous voice once issued out of the midst of the fire, who prescribed a perpetual fire to be kept on the altar of burnt offerings in Jerusalem, and whom an holy apostle designates with the appellation of consuming fire.
In their: History of England, Cassell published, the Druidical rites and ceremonies in Britain were almost identical with the Mosaic ritual. McDermot: in his History of Ireland gives thirteen examples of identical customs of the Celtic and Hebrew races …then we have the evidence of Hoare’s Wiltshire, which states that the facsimile of a Hebrew breastplate, the same nearly as that originally worn by the Hebrew high priest, was found in a cyst, dug up at Stonehenge, and upon the breast of a skeleton of a British Druid. (Druidism in Britain, p.9, quoting Crania Britannica)
When Joseph and the others came to Britain, they were well received by the Druids. The reason is simple, yet remarkable; the Druids knew the name of the Messiah prior to his arrival. The name Jesu was familiar to every Druid having been passed down through the generations. By His death and Resurrection, Jesus had fulfilled their fundamental rule and law. Their acceptance of the Gospel is therefore no surprise. Druidism never opposed Christianity and became freely merged with it. In his 1876 essay: The Ancient British Church, John Pryce penned these extraordinary words:
In this distant corner of the earth, cut off from the rest of the world, unfrequented except by merchants from the opposite coast of Gaul, a people, who only conveyed to the Roman mind the idea of untamed fierceness, was being prepared, ready for the Gospel. It would be difficult to conceive Christianity being preached to any people, for the first time, under more favourable circumstances.
There was hardly a feature in their national character in which it would not find a chord answering and vibrating to its touch. Theirs was not the sceptical mind of the Greek, nor the worn out civilisation of Rome, which even Christianity failed to quicken into life, but a religious, impulsive imagination – children in feeling and knowledge, and therefore meet recipients of the good news of the kingdom of heaven.
To a people whose sense of future existence was so absorbing, that its presentment was almost too deeply felt by them, the preaching of Jesus and the resurrection would appeal with irresistible force. There was no violent divorce between the new teaching and that of their own Druids, nor were they called upon so much to reverse their ancient faith, as to lay it down for a fuller and more perfect revelation…
The Church in Britain; its seeding and growth, its acceptance by the ancient Britons, the arrival of the scattered tribes of Israel, and later testing by Imperial and Papal Rome is a vast subject. There are abundant histories available for further study for both student and reader. It is clear from these that many Disciples and Apostles went to Britain, including Peter, who came and taught in the Isles. But, I have saved the following, which includes a surprising link to Rome, Pudens and Claudia, until last.
Paul
Theodoretus says, Paul preached the Gospel to the Britons and others in the West (De Curandis Graecorum Affectionibus Lib. IX). The historian, Capellus states; I scarcely know of one author, from the time of the Fathers downward, who does not maintain that St. Paul, after his liberation, preached in every country in Western Europe, Britain included. (History of the Apostles) Bishop Burgess writes; Of St. Paul’s journey to Britain we have as satisfactory proof as any historical question can demand. (Independence of the British Church)
An old manuscript, now held at the Bodleian Library refers to Paul’s residence at Siluria, in Southern Wales, where the founding of Bangor Abbey is also ascribed to the Apostle. It tells us the Abby’s guidelines were known as the Rule of Paul. Over each of its four gates was inscribed his principle; If any man will not work neither shall he eat.
The first British Christian King to openly encourage the early Church in Britain was Lucius. He was baptised by his uncle, Timotheus. Timotheus was the brother of Prassede and Pudentiana and son to Pudens and Claudia, who was, brought up on knees of the Apostles. (St Paul in Britain) (See: Peter, Paul, Simon and Rome.)
The man who baptised the first British Christian king was the Apostle Paul’s nephew. Being the son of Paul’s half-brother; Timotheus was related by blood. (And I suspect he was named after Timothy the disciple of Paul.) I hope you are now beginning to see the true significance of, Acts 9:15 … for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the nations, and kings, and the children of Israel… (YLT)
That the Gospel was promoted nationally, under royal endorsement, shows Paul clearly completed the second and third parts of his three-fold mission between 64-67AD. It was no coincidence; Paul spent time in the Palatius on the Mons Sacur with Caradoc and his family.
An Epitaph for Joseph
The Vicar of Glastonbury tells us that Joseph’s body remained buried at Glastonbury until 1345, when Edward III gave his licence to John Bloom of London to dig for it and the Abbot and Monks consented. In 1367, a statement was made by a Lincolnshire Monk that Joseph’s body was found. It was placed into a silver casket and let into a stone sarcophagus, which was then positioned in the east end of Joseph’s Chapel. It subsequently became a place of pilgrimage. There is a written record of the sarcophagus still in position in 1662 when the Chapel had become partially ruined.
Owing to Puritan fanaticism prevalent at the time, it was secretly removed by night into the Parish Churchyard, and its identity was concealed by the pretence that the initials, J.A., stood for John Allen. In 1928 it was found half buried in the soil by the incumbent Vicar, who had it removed back into the Church. Its construction bears out the accounts of a silver casket which could be raised and lowered, and shows other marks of identity. (From: Did Jesus visit Britain? C.C. Dobson)
Joseph, who had claimed the body of Christ; and soon after brought the Gospel to the Isles, passed to sleep in Christ in 76AD. On his tombstone are found these words:
To Britain I came after I had interred the Christ. I taught. I rest.
James, a servant in Jesus’ name: 2015