Joseph of Arimathea (Ancient Greek: Ἰωσὴφ ὁ ἀπὸ Ἀριμαθαίας) is a Biblical figure who assumed responsibility for the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion.

Matthew 27 describes him[a] simply as a rich man and disciple of Jesus, but according to Mark 15, Joseph of Arimathea was "a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God".

The traditional Roman calendar marked his feast day on 17 March, but he is now listed, along with Saint Nicodemus, on 31 August in the Martyrologium Romanum.

The prophecy in Isaiah chapter 53 is known as the "Man of Sorrows" passage: He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.The Greek Septuagint text: And I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death; for he practiced no iniquity, nor craft with his mouth.Since the 2nd century, a mass of legendary detail has accumulated around the figure of Joseph of Arimathea in addition to the New Testament references.

Joseph is mentioned in the works of early church historians such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Eusebius, who added details not found in the canonical accounts.

Francis Gigot, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, states that "the additional details which are found concerning him in the apocryphal Acta Pilati ("Acts of Pilate"), are unworthy of credence.

[10] Hilary of Poitiers (4th century) enriched the legend, and John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople from 397 to 403, was the first to write that Joseph was one of the Seventy Apostles appointed in Luke 10.

Later retellings of the story contend that Joseph of Arimathea travelled to Britain and became the first Christian bishop in the Isles, a claim Gigot characterizes as a fable.

And you have acted not well against the just man, because you have not repented of crucifying him, but also have pierced him with a spear.The Jewish elders then captured Joseph, imprisoned him, and placed a seal on the door to his cell after first posting a guard.

The elders Annas, Caiaphas, Nicodemus, and Joseph himself, along with Gamaliel under whom Paul of Tarsus studied, travelled to Arimathea to interview Simeon's sons Charinus and Lenthius.

Tertullian wrote in Adversus Judaeos that Britain had already received and accepted the Gospel in his lifetime, writing, "all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons—inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ.

However, Eusebius of Caesaria, one of the earliest and most comprehensive of church historians, wrote of Christ's disciples in Demonstratio Evangelica, saying that "some have crossed the Ocean and reached the Isles of Britain.

[18] The first appearance of Joseph in the Glastonbury records can be pinpointed with surprising accuracy to 1247, when the story of his voyage was added as a margin-note to Malmesbury's chronicle.

Often associated with William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time" and its musical setting, widely known as the hymn "Jerusalem", the legend is commonly held as "an almost secret yet passionately held article of faith among certain otherwise quite orthodox Christians" and Smith concluded "that there was little reason to believe that an oral tradition concerning a visit made by Jesus to Britain existed before the early part of the twentieth century".

[20] Sabine Baring-Gould recounted a Cornish story how "Joseph of Arimathea came in a boat to Cornwall, and brought the child Jesus with him, and the latter taught him how to extract the tin and purge it of its wolfram.

[24] The legend that Joseph was given the responsibility of keeping the Holy Grail was the product of Robert de Boron, who essentially expanded upon stories from Acts of Pilate.

In the Lancelot-Grail cycle, a vast Arthurian composition that took much from Robert, it is not Joseph but his son Josephus who is considered the primary holy man of Britain.

A series of miraculous cures took place in 1502 which were attributed to the saint, and in 1520 the printer Richard Pynson published a Lyfe of Joseph of Armathia, in which the Glastonbury Thorn is mentioned for the first time.

[26] Joseph's importance increased exponentially with the English Reformation, since his alleged early arrival far predated the Catholic conversion of AD 597.

[30] Another legend, as recorded in Flores Historiarum, is that Joseph is in fact the Wandering Jew, a man cursed by Jesus to walk the Earth until the Second Coming.