And Was Jerusalem Builded Here?

One thread however runs through the accounts that would not have been made up. The history of Arthur always includes the tale that Arthur set out to recover the Holy Grail and that he set out to search for it in England. What a bizarre place to look! No one writing those tales had access to the Greek historic records which record how the Grail really came to be brought to Britain, so it pushed coincidence too far to suggest that anyone would invent a tale that was based around the Grail being in Britain. Thus the tale must come from real historic memory of actions undertaken by Arthur after the Grail was brought to Britain and presumably fell into the wrong hands. But if this tale can be verified as having real historic roots then the implication is that the whole body of stories from the early – though not the later – accounts of Arthur, may far more closely be based on fact than is normally thought!

Once tales existed which involved the Grail being in England without anyone knowing how it got here it was inevitable that someone would invent an explanation for this. The storey chosen was that Joseph of Arimathea brought it with him on one of his visits to Britain and then buried it near Glastonbury Abbey. The explanation produced for his visits was that he came to trade with Cornish tin miners. Joseph of Arithmathea lived so long before the earliest events for which Britain has its own historical memory that this is clearly a storey made up to fill a gap, however it came to be the accepted explanation. From this storey it was only a small step further to suggest that as a regular visitor to Britain and as a family friend of Jesus, Mary and Joseph perhaps he might have brought the infant Jesus with him on one of his trips, and from there only one more step to say that he did. In fact he did not.

Thus the answer to Blake’s first three questions which ask if Jesus visited Britain is “No.” The answer to the fourth question as to whether Jerusalem was built here however is “No, but Camelot was!”