Manuscript
The Estoire del Saint Graal, Joseph’s forty-three years
The Estoire del Saint Graal, as printed by H. Oskar Sommer from a British Museum manuscript. No author is named in the passage.
A medieval romance. The passage sets Joseph’s release in the reigns it gives to Titus and Vespasian.
- Citation
- H. Oskar Sommer, The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, volume 1, Lestoire del Saint Graal (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1909), publication no. 74, pages 15–18. The copy checked is that volume.
- Locator
- Volume 1, pages 15–18
What the source says
By page 15 Joseph is already in the prison the text gave to Caiaphas on page 14. These pages then count reigns: Tiberius a good ten years after the crucifixion, Gaius seven, Claudius fourteen, then Titus, with Vespasian his son. In the third year of Titus, the text says, Joseph is released. Vespasian, cured of leprosy, asks how long Joseph thinks he has been shut in. Joseph says from Friday until that day. Caiaphas answers that he is told it is forty-three years, fully completed. Joseph does not recognise Caiaphas, his wife, or his son.
Why it is here
Ellis uses this episode in Jesus, King of Edessa.
Ralph’s interpretation
He says the authors put Joseph to sleep for forty years so that he could serve Vespasian and the orthodox dates could be kept. The pages opened here do not say that he slept, and they say forty-three years, not forty. That wording is his summary of the episode.
Alternative readings
Sommer’s volume is a 1909 printing of a medieval romance, not a report from Vespasian’s reign. In this text Vespasian is the son of Titus and is leprous. A footnote on page 15 gives another manuscript’s count as forty-two years from the crucifixion, not forty-three. The forty-three years are in the text on page 18. The footnote is a variant, not a correction of the story.