Young Jesus in Britain
There is an Arthurian legend that Jesus travelled to Britain as a boy, lived at Priddy in the Mendips, and built the first wattle cabin at Glastonbury. William Blake's poem And did those feet in ancient time was inspired by the story of Jesus travelling to Britain. Glyn S. Lewis in Did Jesus Come to Britain? (2008) recounts the legends that Jesus visited Britain with his great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was supposedly a tin merchant and took Jesus under his care when his mother Mary was widowed. Gordon Strachan wrote Jesus the Master Builder: Druid Mysteries and the Dawn of Christianity (1998), which was the basis of the documentary titled And Did Those Feet (2009). Strachan believed Jesus may have travelled to Britain to study with the Druids.
The story of Jesus visiting Britain as a boy is a late development of legends connected with Joseph of Arimathea. During the late 12th century, Joseph of Arimathea became connected with the Arthurian cycle, appearing in them as the first keeper of the Holy Grail. This idea first appears in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie, in which Joseph receives the Grail from an apparition of Jesus and sends it with his followers to Britain. This theme is elaborated upon in Boron's sequels and in subsequent Arthurian works penned by others. Later retellings of the story contend that Joseph of Arimathea himself travelled to Britain and became the first Christian bishop in the Isles.
Read more about this topic: Lost Years Of Jesus
Famous quotes containing the words young, jesus and/or britain:
“Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“I allude to these facts to show that, so far from the Supper being a tradition in which men are fully agreed, there has always been the widest room for difference of opinion upon this particular. Having recently given particular attention to this subject, I was led to the conclusion that Jesus did not intend to establish an institution for perpetual observance when he ate the Passover with his disciples; and further, to the opinion that it is not expedient to celebrate it as we do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be “too clever by half.” The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.”
—John Major (b. 1943)