Joseph Arimathea and Priesthood in England

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

This post explores the start of the priesthood in England. It considers the historical, archaeological and anthropological data that suggests an early presence of Jewish priests in Roman Britain who were followers of Jesus Christ. These ruler-priests were members of the Sanhedrin and had authority to ordain priests for the Church. One of them was Joseph Arimathea, a mining expert whose excavated family sepulcher was where Jesus’ body was laid.

Hebrew ruler-priests were widely dispersed before the time of Abraham. As early as 4000 years ago they were in the Nile Valley, Arabia, Canaan, Sumer, northern Mesopotamia, and Anatolia in what is today southern Turkey. Horite Hebrew miners were excavating tin mines in Timna before ancient Egypt became an empire. Timna, the site of some of the world's oldest copper mines, is near Beersheba in modern day Israel. The Horite Hebrew were devotees of HR (Horus) and his mother Hathor. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timna by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.

Dispersal of Y-DNA Haplogroup R1B

Genetic studies indicate that a significant minority of Jewish males carry Y-DNA Haplogroup R1b, the same Haplogroup to which approximately 70% of native British men belong. The point of origin of this haplogroup is the Fertile Crescent.

The early Hebrew priests served as prophets, scribes, smiths, stone masons, miners, and physicians. They performed circumcisions, a practice that persisted among the royal Anglo-Celtic families. They offered sacrifices at temples and prayers at sacred shrines where people came for healing. They performed ceremonies at circles of standing stones, and they ordained their high priests in a succession extending back well before the time of Abraham.

Depending on who is telling the story, accounts differ as to when the priesthood came to the British Isles. This article focuses on the earliest known activity of priests in England who were followers of Jesus Christ.

Tin deposits in Spain, France and southwestern England

 

Hebrew followers of Jesus were in England as mining experts, metal workers, and merchants during Jesus’ earthly life. They traveled the ancient tin route between the metal-rich shores of Britain, Spain and Portugal, the Mediterranean and North Africa. This tin was essential for bronze production. Paul's desire to go to Spain suggests that he knew Jewish believers there who would be helpful in efforts to spread the Gospel. Spain was part of the tin trade route between the Mediterranean world and Britain.

A 2025 study has revealed that tin mined 3,300 years ago in south-west Britain was a key resource for the Bronze Age civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean. The study suggests that communities in Cornwall and Devon were part of a vast international trade system that supported ancient palaces and royal city-states of the Eastern Mediterranean.

These tin ingots were found off the coast of Israel. The tin came from Cornwall. Tin ingots from Cornwall dating to 2000 B.C. have been found in Israel and ingots from Cornwall dating to 1300 BC have been found at archaeological sites in Turkey and Greece. The tin trade brought together people from the Levant, the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, and parts of Europe.

Joseph of Arimathea was a mining expert involved with the tin mined from the rich, alluvial deposits of Cornwall and Devon in the south of England. Mining in Cornwall and Devon began as early as 2150 B.C.

The Ding Dong mine is one of the oldest mines in Cornwall. An old miner told A. K. Hamilton Jenkin in the early 1940's: "Why, they do say there's only one mine in Cornwall older than Dolcoath, and that's Ding Dong, which was worked before the time of Jesus Christ." (Hamilton Jenkin, A. K. Cornwall and its People. London: J. M. Dent; p. 347) According to local legend, the Ding Dong mine was one of the places visited by Joseph Arimathea.

Note that I use the correct title for Joseph Arimathea, rather than “Joseph of Arimathea”. Arimathea is not a place. It indicates Joseph’s Hebrew lineage. The Ar prefix appears in the names of rulers and high-ranking priests. Examples include the Sumerian king Arwium of Kish, Artama, Archelaos, Artaxerxes, Ar-Shem, Artix, Areli, Araxes, Arviragus, a Jebusite named Araunah who sold a threshing floor to King David, and Arishen, a Horite Hebrew who ruled a territory in the central Zagros between 2400-2301 B.C. Ariaramnes was the great uncle of Cyrus the Great. The Ar prefix in Britain’s history is highlighted by King Arthur and Joseph Arimathea. Ar is likely a shortened Horus name, as Horus was regarded as the patron of ruler-priests and kings in the ancient world.

Ar-Mathea indicates that Joseph was a ruler-priest of the Hebrew clan of Mathea or Matthew. He was a relative of Jesus and the Virgin Mary and of the Evangelist Matthew.

The churches of the East acknowledge that Joseph Arimathea "traveled around the world, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ" and they belief that "he died peacefully in England."

Legends about Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin and a follower of Jesus, became elaborate in the Middle Ages. That was a time when the Roman Catholic Church funded parishes through the exhibition of relics and pilgrimages. Beyond the embroidered accounts, however, there is a kernel of verifiable historical truth. Joseph of Arimathea was in Cornwall, and probably in Devon also.

Anglicans maintain that the priesthood of the Church was well established in the British Isles before the Augustinian Mission arrived from Rome in 595 A.D

According to the Roman Catholic narrative, the only priesthood that has validity was planted in Britain by Augustine in AD 595. That narrative ignores the reality of Hebrew followers of Jesus who had authority to ordain priests in Britain in Jesus’ lifetime. The priesthood of the Church was well established in the British Isles before the Augustinian Mission arrived from Rome in 595 A.D.

The Roman Catholic Church claims to have brought the only legitimate priesthood to Britain. However, the priest disciples of Jesus Christ who came to Roman Britain were not Roman Catholics. They were Jewish believers whose rules for ordination align with the Anglican Church's rules for ordination, as will be demonstrated in this series.

Today resources are available that can help to construct a more accurate picture of how the Messianic Faith that we call "Christianity" came to thrive in Roman Britain before Augustine's arrival from Rome.

Related reading: The Ar Rulers; The Priesthood in England - Part 1; Hebrew Names and Titles

Thank you, Readers!

 

I'm dropping a line here to thank the readers of this blog. I appreciate you! 

Feel free to post comments. I enjoy reading them and I try to respond to all of them.

Many of the people who follow this blog also follow Just Genesis, another of my blogs. If you have never visited that blog, I invite you to do so.

Again, thank you for reading, and keep the comments coming.

Alice C. Linsley

INDEX of Topics at Just Genesis

Hebrew Women Who Did Not Marry

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Most Hebrew women married, but some chose to remain unmarried. Among them were women whose service in the temple required celibacy, and women who became independently wealthy and started businesses. High-status women were sometimes denied marriage by their fathers or patrons. Hebrew concubines did not have the same status as Hebrew wives.

Fathers who denied marriage opportunities to their noble daughters were wary of fortune seeking men who sought to advance their careers, raise their social status, increase their wealth, or expand their territories through marriage to royal daughters. Such ambitious suitors posed a threat to the kingdom. As with rulers throughout the ages, royal marriages required consideration of the lines of descent, the ancestral marriage and ascendancy pattern, rights of inheritance, political alliances, and avoidance of war and potential bloodshed. 

A Roman narrative tells of how the daughter of Numitor Silvius was forced to become a Vestal Virgin after Numitor's younger brother Amulius seized the throne and killed Numitor's son. Amulius then forced Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin who was sworn to celibacy, thus ensuring that the line of Numitor had no heirs. In Greek accounts, the Delphic oracle warned Aleus of Tegea that if his daughter Auge had a son, the grandson would kill Aleus' sons. To prevent this, Aleus made Auge a priestess of Athena, requiring her to live a celibate life as a temple-dedicated virgin.

The accounts of marriage being denied to royal daughters reveals a great deal about the political, social, and religious concerns of biblical rulers. Some Bible scholars believe that Jephthah dedicated his daughter to the service of God to avoid having to give her in marriage to the son of one of his brothers. Jephthah’s vow to dedicate the first living thing that he saw to God helped him avoid giving his daughter's hand in marriage. As the clan ruler, Jephthah probably had social and political reasons to deny her marriage. It may also be that his daughter was privy to the plan and played her part perfectly to avoid marriage.

The story of Jephthah’s daughter is usually cited as an example of child sacrifice, yet the biblical text states only that she was dedicated to God’s service. Jephthah was a ruler who led his men in a successful battle against the Ammonites. He vowed to offer to God “whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me” (Jg. 11:30). Had he seen a sheep, goat, or a cow, he would have sacrificed that to God. However, no livestock were in sight upon his return. Instead, as if one cue, his daughter came running to meet him. It may be that by dedicating her to God Jephthah saved face and avoided open refusal of his daughter's hand to the son of one of his brothers.

Likely his daughter was privy to the scheme because it is she who insisted that he fulfill his vow to God (Jg. 11:36). Jephthah’s daughter may have wished to follow the career of her paternal grandmother who served at a shrine and is wrongly described as a “prostitute” in Judges 11:1. Perhaps Jephthah’s daughter hoped that by giving up worldly aspirations, she might be chosen to bring forth the promised Messiah. It was long believed that the mother of the Messiah would be a temple woman who would conceive by divine overshadowing. This is why Sargon claimed that his mother conceived him while in the temple at Azu-pir-Anu. It should be noted that the Virgin Mary was the temple-dedicated daughter of the priest Joachim, and she conceived Jesus by the “overshadowing of the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:35).

When marriage was to be avoided, some royal women were sent to the temples or to monasteries. Some lived saintly sequestered lives and others lived much as they had in their father’s palaces. Some attained high rank as abbesses in charge of monastic communities. Abbess Hildegard of Bingen became known as the “Sibyl of the Rhine” because of her accomplishments in literature, natural science, and music. In ancient Egypt, royal daughters were appointed to the two highest ranks a woman could hold: the temple positions of the God’s Wife (Hemet Netjer) and the Divine Adoratrice (Duat Netjer). 

According to the British historian, Barbara Yorke, “All the Anglo-Saxon nunneries in southern England for which we have the relevant evidence were founded by members of a royal house, usually by either the reigning monarch or one of his close female relatives; it is not always clear which should be described as the founder. Not only were the nunneries founded by one of the ruling houses, but they continued to be regarded as possessions of the royal house throughout their existence.”

The custom of placing royal daughters in monasteries has an ancient precedent. In a shrewd political move to secure power in the south of his kingdom, Sargon (reigned 2334–2284 B.C.) appointed his daughter Heduanna as the “En” of the shrine at Ur. The Akkadian term En means lord, master, royal official, priest or priestess. En-Heduanna is credited with a large body of cuneiform poetry.

The possibility of marriage remained open for some women dedicated to the temples and monasteries. Occasionally, political necessity or matters of inheritance required a sequestered noble woman to marry. Among the endogamous Hebrew rulers, a virgin might be released from her temple vow when a favorable match could be found between Hebrew relatives. That appears to be the case with the Virgin Mary who married Joseph of Nazareth. Nazareth was the home of the eighteenth division of Hebrew ruler-priests. The ancestors of those ruler-priests lived in the Nile Valley where they served at temples. The Nilotic Hebrew were organized into two moieties, the Horite Hebrew and the Sethite Hebrew.

Related reading: Temple Women; Concubinage Among the Hebrew; Competition Between the Horites and the Sethites; Fertility and Water Shrines

The "Sons of God"

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Some of the earliest rulers named in the Bible are deified by the biblical writers. That is apparent in Genesis 6:4 which ascribes to the mighty men of old the status of elohim (deities) and gibborim (powerful ones). They are also called “sons of God” which is a common honorific among rulers of the ancient world. These rulers and kingdom builders married daughters of noble families who brought forth the proper heirs to royal territories.

The technological advances of the earliest known civilizations were under the powerful leadership and authority of what Genesis 6 calls "the mighty men of old." They established law codes as early as 3000 B.C., built fortified cities, waged war, formed treaties, and established expansive trade along the major water systems of the ancient world.

Some conspiracy theorists attribute the advanced technologies of early civilizations to aliens or to angelic beings. They write curious tomes about the Nephilim and the Annunaki. There is a great deal of interest in the Nephilim, and much of what is written is not supported by the canonical Scriptures, history, archaeology and anthropology. The term refers to powerful men who were considered "sons of God" in the ancient world because of their authority and grandeur. In Genesis 6 the phrase "sons of God" parallels the phrase "daughters of men." Such parallelism is typical of Semitic literature.

The term Nephilim comes from the Aramaic word npyl (nephil) which can mean giant or simply great. The context of Genesis 6-10 suggests that a better rendering is "mighty" or "great." The Aramaic npyl is equivalent to the Arabic nfy, meaning “hunter”. That is why some Bibles describe Nimrod, the Kushite city builder, as a "mighty hunter." The text could also read "a mighty man before the Lord."

As with all in power, there was corruption and vanity. This is the backdrop for the account of Noah, a righteous mighty man. His father Lamech the Younger (Gen. 5) was a righteous man also.

The Anakim and the Nephilim are described as heroes, "sons" of God (that is, deified ones), and the "powerful ones" (gibborim). The term gibborim comes from the term gibor, meaning powerful. Some Hebrew queens held the title gibrah, meaning powerful woman.

The Akkadian term Annunaki refers to the people of Annu. The Anakim and Anunnaki are not different groups! These are early deified rulers who called the High God Annu or Anu. Annu was a name for the High God among some Mesopotamians and among some who lived in Canaan. According to their belief, Anu/Annu has a son who is Lord/Master over the Earth. In Akkadian, the divine son was called "Enki". En means master or lord in Akkadian.

The Anakim were related to Anak of Hebron, where Sarah resided. The Anakim were organized as a three-clan confederation. The three clans were named for these three sons of Anak: Sheshai (Shasu?), Ahiman, and Talmai (Josh.15:14). There is a connection between the Nephilim (Num. 13:33), the Raphaim (Deut. 2:10), the Calebites (Josh.15:13), and the Anakim.

Related reading: Why So Many Names For God?; A Book about the Nephilim

Christ has Risen as Foretold

 

Matthew chapter 28 recounts how two women named Mary came to the tomb very early in the morning. They came toward dawn. John 20:1 indicates that it was still dark. Sunrise Easter services are a way of acknowledging Jesus' resurrection which happened before dawn.

Among the early Hebrew (4000-2000 BC) the Son of God was associated with the sun. He was said to rise in the morning as a lamb and to grow to the mature strength of a ram at sunset. He rode with the Father on the solar boat. The boat of the morning hours was called Mandjet and the boat of the evening hours was called Mesektet. While the Son was on the Mesektet, he was in his ram-headed form. You will recall that God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Abraham would have recognized this as a symbol of the Son of God who his Horite Hebrew people expected.

Related reading: What Abraham Discovered on Mt. Moriah; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Early Resurrection Texts; The Resurrection Symbolism of Decorated Eggs

Abraham Settled in the Land of Cain

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The Bible speaks about the dispersion of the early Hebrew throughout and beyond the well-watered expanse of Eden. Cain left his homeland and settled “east of Eden” (Gen. 4:15) in the land of Canaan. There Cain built a city that he named for Enoch, one of his sons. Canaan is where we later meet Cain's descendants, the Kenites. 

Some of Noah’s descendants, the Hittites, settled in Canaan and Anatolia. The Hittites were descendants of Heth (Gen. 10). Heth was the second son of Canaan (or Cain the Younger) and the ancestor of the Hittites ("sons of Heth").

Nimrod left the Nile Valley and settled in Mesopotamia where he became famous as a city builder (Gen. 10). He married a Mesopotamian princess.

Abraham left Haran in what is today Turkey and settled in Canaan, the land of one of his early ancestors. There he became established in ancient Edom or Idumea, the "Land of Red People". His territory extended on a north-south axis between the settlements of his two wives, Sarah in Hebron and Keturah in Beersheba. His wives' settlements marked the boundaries of his territory.

The Hebrew practice of sending away non-ascendant sons drove the dispersion of the early Hebrew out of Africa into Arabia, Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. Cain, Nimrod, and Abraham moved away from their families of origin. In the Bible, the first example of that is Cain, a Hebrew, who left his homeland west of Canaan. This fits with the archaeological evidence that locates the oldest known site of Hebrew worship at Nekhen in the Nile Valley. Nimrod was a son of Kush and Kush is another name for the Nile Valley.

Canaan is where we find some of Cain's descendants, the Kenites (Gen. 15:18–21; Ex. 3:1; Num. 24:20; Jg. 1:16; Jg. 4:11). The word Kenite and the name Cain/Kain are related to the land of Canaan, which is כנען, pronounced kena'an. The Kenites were descendants of Tubal Cain who is identified as an early blacksmith in Genesis 4. The Kenite smiths often camped outside of cities where they did their metal work. When Saul came to attack Amalek’s city, he warned the Kenites to move away, saying, “Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them: for ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.” (1 Sam. 15:5-6)

Related reading: Cain as Ruler; The Shrine City of Nekhen; Hebrew Priests in Aram, Edom, Judah, and Moab; Hebrew Sent-Away Sons; The Wives' Settlements Mark the Boundaries; Eden Was a Well-Watered Region; Nimrod's Mesopotamian Wife

A Christian Anthropologist Considers Gender in the Bible

Dr. Alice C. Linsley


As a Christian anthropologist, I read the Bible to understand how the biblical Hebrew reasoned. Their reasoning is not well represented by the term "complementarian" because that term suggests that there is no hierarchy in their reasoning. That is a false assumption. Orthodoxy requires binary reasoning. That is how the Bible presents the male-female relationship. To understand binary reasoning, we must consider how the Bible presents binary sets pertaining to gender.

We begin in Genesis 1:16 where we are told about the sun and the moon, which for the biblical Hebrew represented a gendered binary set. The sun is described as the greater light that rules the day and the moon as the lesser light that rules the night.

This reflects the binary distinctions which characterize the Messianic Faith revealed in the Bible. In this view, one entity of the binary set is superior to the other in an obvious way. The sun is superior to the moon because it is the greater light. The moon's light is refulgent. Likewise, the male is larger and stronger than the female. The sun is to the moon what the male is to the female, superior in size and strength. This is characteristic of the binary distinctions observed by the early Hebrew in the patterns of nature. 

Their acute observation of those patterns informed the Hebrew binary reasoning. The sun was assigned a masculine gender and was greater than the moon which was assigned a feminine gender. This pattern was modeled on earth by the Nilotic Hebrew kings and their queens. The kings appeared with skin darkened by the sun. Their queens appeared in public with white skin, representing the moon.

In Genesis 37, Joseph had a dream of his father as the sun and his mother as the moon. His dream expressed the Hebrew understanding of male and female as a binary set.

Binary reasoning involves hierarchy. One entity of the binary set is universally recognized as superior in some way to its partner. The primary sets are Creator-Creature, Life-Death, Male-Female, and Sun-Moon. It is evident from observation and experience that one entity of the binary set is greater in visible ways than its opposite. The Creator is greater than the creature. Life is greater than death. The sun is greater than the moon. Males are larger and stronger than females. (See Binary Reasoning Informs Christian Morality and Ethics, also Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida on Binary Oppositions)

Indeed, binary reasoning upholds the importance of the female, and this is reflected in the balance of male-female narratives in the Bible which give equal attention to males and females. The blood symbolism of the Passover associated with Moses has a parallel in the blood symbolism of the scarlet cord associated with Rahab. Those under the cover of this blood symbolism were saved from destruction.

The abusive behavior of drunken Noah toward his sons has a parallel in the abusive behavior of drunken Lot toward his daughters.

The gender balance is evident in the New Testament narratives also. When Jesus was presented in the temple His identity as Messiah was attested by the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna.

Men and women are among Jesus’ followers. The women reportedly provided many of the material needs of Jesus and the Disciples. Jesus restored life to Jairus’ daughter (daughter to father) and life to the son of the widow of Nain (son to mother).

Jesus’ parables in Luke 15 involve a male seeking a lost sheep and a female seeking a lost coin. Paul commends both men and women to the Gospel ministry. Among them are Apollos, Priscilla, and Phoebe, a leader from the church at Cenchreae, a port city near Corinth. Paul attached to Phoebe the title of prostatis, meaning a female patron or benefactor.

To understand the gender balance of the early Hebrew, we must dismiss the false narrative that their social structure was patriarchal. The traits of a patriarchy do not apply to the biblical Hebrew from whom we receive the earliest elements of the Messianic Faith we call "Christianity." There were Hebrew women of authority. Line of descent was traced through high-status wives, especially the cousin brides. Residential arrangements included neolocal, avunculocal, matrilocal, and patrilocal, and the biblical data reveals that the responsibilities and rights of males and females were balanced, yet distinct.

So, after all this, my observation about the ACNA and other Anglican jurisdictions is that we have failed to dig deep into the canonical Scriptures which should inform every aspect of our life as the Church.

Related reading: Orthodoxy Requires Binary Reasoning; Philosophers' Corner: Two Types of Binary Reasoning; The Feminist Critique Fails; Is "Male Headship" a Biblical Doctrine?;  Is "Complementarianism" a Biblical Concept?; Misunderstanding the Priesthood