Righteous Joseph of Arimathea

Righteous Joseph of Arimathea was an honorable and respected member of the Sanhedrin (Mark 15:43) from the town of Arimathea (Judea), a secret disciple of Christ who did not consent to the Sanhedrin's decision to condemn Him (Luke 23:50-51).

After the Crucifixion, Joseph boldly asked Pilate for the body of Jesus and, with Nicodemus's help, wrapped it in a clean shroud and laid it in his own new rock-hewn tomb (Matt. 27:57-60; Mark 15:43-46; Luke 23:50-53; John 19:38-42) — thereby fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy (53:9) that the Messiah would be buried "with the rich."

According to Western medieval tradition (connected with the legends of the Holy Grail and Glastonbury), he later preached the Gospel in Britain, where he is venerated as "Apostle to Britain" — this is a later, post-biblical hagiographic tradition, not a datable historical fact.

He is commemorated together with Righteous Nicodemus on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women (a movable feast, the 3rd Sunday after Pascha) — although formally neither of them is counted among the myrrh-bearing women themselves — as well as on a fixed commemoration day, July 31/August 13.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the BC era contamination has been corrected to AD. An internal field contradiction has also been fixed: the original feast_days field listed an unconfirmed "March 9/22," while the stub's own text gave a different date, "July 22/August 4" — both proved inaccurate; the correct, source-confirmed fixed date is July 31/August 13.