MembersYeshua’s Last Days in Jerusalem

‘On one of his business trips to Britain, Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus along’ – one of the myths propounded by British-Israelism, which my wife and I heard with our own ears, related during a lunch-break ‘chapel’ meeting in Forth Worth, Texas, by a former night-club bouncer [and much more such twaddle]. Could this have been inspired by the mystic poet/artist?!

Passing through London 40 years ago, I had occasion to visit a first-cousin of my father’s, a highly intellectual Orthodox Jew. In an attempt to disabuse me of the ‘folly’ of believing in Yeshua [Jesus], referencing the multitude taking branches of palm trees with which to greet Yeshua [John 12:13], he stressed that ‘everyone knows that lulavim [palm branches] are waved during Succot [Tabernacles], NOT at Pessah [Passover]’. To which I responded that some years earlier, in the height of summer, I had witnessed – at the Allenby Bridge crossing of the Jordan – returnees from the hadj [Mecca pilgrimage] being greeted by fellow-Muslims waving palm fronds!