Gospel of Joseph of Arimathea

,

• Publisher: Wild Goose Publications
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781905010356
• eBook ISBN: 9781849521307
• Topic: Theology & Religion

What was Jesus of Nazareth really like? What effect did he have on those he met and befriended? How did he impart his teachings and perform his miracles? These are the questions that James Harpur explores through Joseph of Arimathea, one of the most enigm

JOSEPH

17

The witnesses have told their tales. What should be made of them I leave to judgements better than my own. The only thing left I have to do is tell the final story. For those who have ears to hear, as he would say, let them listen now.

Joseph

The waves were fiery, restless,

A comfort in their endlessness –

Horizons like an empty mind

Light glancing from collapsing angles,

The salty wind and spattering mist

The blossoming of the sails …

How could my darkest mood resist

These elemental energies?

But still my mind consumed itself.

What happens to us after death

And to the disembodied soul?

What happens to the soulless body?

Does it disintegrate to dust

Surviving as a dusty memory?

Anger, pleasure, kindness, lust –

Do they maintain their life in life

Beyond, or will we then be angels,

In substance neither man nor woman

Without the personalities

That we exhibited alive

But simply taking messages

From one dimension to another

Like obsequious ambassadors

In silken gold-embroidered coats?

The thoughts kept rocking side to side

On board the broad Phoenician boat

That took me and my precious cargo,

A heavy trunk that reeked of myrrh,

From Palestine, Jerusalem,

The spiky skyline of Golgotha.

Before the end I must confess

I could not keep myself away

But followed him around the city

To hear his every utterance,

Amazed, half-proud and even scared

Of his passion and intensity,

I’d never heard such rhetoric,

As if his life depended on it –

I felt my life depended on it.

For the first time I nearly grasped

The simple beauty of his vision

Its lure of selfless sympathy

With every living thing. Nearly.

I could not give myself to him

Uproot my old familiar ways;

But I could see his path was true:

That love destroys impediments

To living fully in the present;

But as for everlasting life

On which his teaching seemed to hang –

What can I say? I did not know,

Nor did his followers I guessed.

Perhaps I’d seen too many corpses

And did not have the imagination.

It needed more than faith to make

The leap from death to deathlessness.

It made me think what I could do.

Then suddenly the ending came.

That dark unholy day

With thunderstorms approaching fast;

Such helplessness and sense of loss –

That they had taken from this life

Not just a fragile human being

But all the love of God itself.

I saw the body on the cross –

I’d never been so close to death

In such protracted agony:

Then, there, I vowed to honour him,

That poor collapsed and beaten waif,

And what he had been striving for,

No matter what it took or cost.

It came to me what must be done.

The timing had to be just right.

We took the body from the cross

And laid it on the slushy ground

In blinding wind and blinding rain;

We washed and wrapped it in a cloth

Carried it to a wooden shelter

Embalmed it in a makeshift way

Then laid it in the waiting tomb.

Then two days later easterlies

Were scouring out my brain

On board the freighter speeding past

The giant forms of blackened clouds

The fins of charcoal seas.

Such a relief to sail out west

To leave the darkness of Judea

And let the heart digest its grief.

What happens to the soul or spirit

And to the body after death?

Are we transmuted into angels?

Does anything remain of us?

I thought of my Egyptian friend,

A priest from Alexandria,

And how he thought a dead man’s breath

Attempted to rejoin its body

And must be given offerings

Of food and drink to nourish it;

And how the body must lie in

A place the spirit knew and loved

To stop its anguished wandering.

We passed the southern coast of Crete

And stopped a day or so at Malta.

Beyond the Pillars of Hercules

We turned towards the northern star.

I watched the constellations rise

In darker gaps between the clouds

Familiarising those strange skies

And I recalled the trip we shared

In what seemed like another life.

I watched the waves beneath the sun

Riddled with liquid ivory;

I watched the waves beneath the night

Supporting us on every side

And guiding this great ship to land;

Then buried under sheepskin hides

I listened to the creaking wood

The rhythmic answering calls of steersmen

Echoing like distant owls

And lulling me to sleep.

One night, on deck, I saw him in a dream,

As clear and potent as a vision

(And this is how my quest began):

He was walking on the tops of waves,

White-flecked and crinkling in the moon,

And leading tiny ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Prologue
• Nathanael
• Azor
• Chrosest
• Nicodemus
• John
• Bartimaeus
• Zacchaeus
• Mary of Bethany
• Martha
• Judas
• James
• Simon of Cyrene
• Mary
• Mary of Magdala
• Cleopas
• Simon Peter
• Joseph
• About the Author
• Also by James Harpur