Steuart Campbell
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The Rise and Fall of Jesus

31/10/2019

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A complete explanation for the life of Jesus and the origin of Christianity

The 3rd revised edition of this book has now been published by Tectum Verlag in Germany. Contact them if you want a review copy.


What really happened to Jesus? Did he rise from the dead, and if not why do Christians believe that he did? Did he have a plan and, if so, what was it? Did he accomplish his purpose or did the plan fail? If it failed, what were the consequences?
As a former Christian, I takes a rationalist look at the problem of Christian origins and show that no previous writer has completely solved the riddle of Jesus. My hypothesis explains Jesus' curious behaviour and solves age-long mysteries that no one else had solved. Here is Jesus in historical context, the leader of an obscure Jewish sect which believed that it was fulfilling a divine plan revealed in the Scriptures. This plan required the Messiah to die and rise again to become the king of Israel, throwing the Romans out of Judaea and even replacing the Emperor as ruler of the known world. Read how Jesus expected to accomplish this. Read how his plan failed.
Also read how Christianity began by mistake.

I build on the work of many other authors and construct what must be the true explanation for the origin of Christianity. This should be the last book on Jesus.

I also review of the many attempts to solve the mystery by other sceptical or objective writers.
'Taking up the torch from where Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus left off, Campbell offers a provocative, and what for many will be a deeply disturbing, account of the life, mission, death and "resurrection" of the historical Jesus...[it] is also a good read...it has some of the merits of a good detective story'
                                         Professor James Thrower, University of Aberdeen


ISBN 978-3-8288-4346-2   
ePDF 978-3-8288-7327-8   
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Why the Star of Bethlehem did not exist

2/2/2016

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Picture
In December 2015, I suggest to the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh, of which I am a member, that I give a short presentation on The Star of Bethlehem (I didn't tell them what I would say about it). This was accepted and I gave the talk on 8 Feb 2016. As a result I was invited to write it up for their online Journal. The article below was the result.

Almost every Christmas an astronomer attempts to explain the Star of Bethlehem. The Sky at Night team did so in their programme broadcast on 2015 Dec 30 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06t3wst). They concluded that it was most likely to have been a comet and showed Giotto’s painting of the Nativity with a comet in the sky (see below):











Other artists portraying the Nativity usually just showed a distant star.

I am a member of the ASE because I am interested in astronomy and cosmology. But I also have an abiding interest in the origin of Christianity and the life of Jesus. This is the result of a youth misspent as a Christian, a religion I abandoned a long time ago. This interest deepened until I found that I could write a book on the subject, which covers all aspects of the gospel story (see http://www.steuartcampbell.com/life-of-jesus-and-the-origin-of-christianity.html). Necessarily the book examines Jesus’ birth and the story of the Star of Bethlehem.

The story comes only from Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 2, as follows (Authorised version):

'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.  And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.  And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judæa: for thus it is written by the prophet,...Then Herod, when he had privily [secretly] called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.  And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.  When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.'

Several things about this account should trouble astronomers. Does the account mean that the magi saw the ‘star’ in the east, i.e. rising, and followed it during a night as it travelled west? Or does it just mean that, being in the east themselves (Arabia?), they saw the ‘star’ in the west, over Palestine. If the latter, the ‘star’ would have set before they even came to Jerusalem. It is not clear.
     The question of the time of the appearance of the ‘star’ is also obscure. No answer is given to this question and one wonders how it could be answered. Herod seems to have thought it significant, but we are not told why.
    Most puzzling of all is the idea that the magi could follow the ‘star’ to identify a particular building in Bethlehem. Astronomers especially know that a celestial object or phenomenon cannot be identified with a particular location on the surface of the earth. Perhaps they are ignorant of this account or choose to ignore it as they search for any celestial phenomenon that might explain it. The entire confused account should alert astronomers to the possibility that it is unreliable and that they might not be looking for a real ‘star’.
 
It is important to understand that the two accounts of Jesus birth, one here in Matthew and another incompatible one in Luke’s Gospel are additions to the first Gospel, that of Mark. Both Matthew and Luke, took Mark as their basis and made additions to give Jesus an origin and background commensurate with his later deification and to elevate him the status of a Saviour God at least equal to contemporary such gods. The obvious comparison is with Mithras, the god of the Roman Army. Indeed, Matthew may have borrowed from the Mithraic books, which, it is reported, tell how, when Mithras was born, a star fell from the sky and was followed by Zoroastrian priests called ‘Magi’ on the way to worship him (by the way, Mithras birthday was Dec 25!).
    Neither Mark’s nor John’s Gospel know anything about Jesus’ origin. Biblical scholars believe that the entire Birth Narratives of Matthew and Luke are inventions, for the purpose explained above.
     Matthew in particular, writing for the Jewish community in Alexandria, was at pains to show fulfilment of Jewish prophecy, or at least to show links between Jesus’ origin and the Jewish Scriptures. Consequently he may have borrowed from a Jewish apocryphal book like The Testament of Levi (one of the Jewish patriarchs). In that book, in a description of the last days (18:3), one finds the statement that ‘his star shall arise in heaven as of a king. Lighting up the light of knowledge as the sun the day’. Also, in 24:1, the statement that ‘shall a star arise to you from Jacob in peace’. One can even see forecast of a star in Numbers 24:17 (‘There shall come a star out of Jacob’). In the Old Testament, the word ‘star’ often stood for the Messiah.

Jewish readers would easily see the connection and be persuaded that Jesus really was the Messiah, the point Matthew was trying to convey. I understand that The Talmud, a central text of Rabbinic Judaism, contains a statement that 'when the Messiah is to be revealed a star will rise in the east...and seven other stars round it will fight on every side'.

It is common knowledge that ancient peoples saw celestial phenomena as signifying or celebrating some important event, such as the birth of a king, on Earth. It is not so obvious, but equally logical, that an important historical Earthly event must somehow have been reflected in the sky. Consequently, even though nothing appeared at the time, such an event was easily invented to convince people that the event described had great significance. Miraculous events were often invented to accompany the births or deaths of Roman Emperors. Such was the case here. Believing that Jesus was the expected Messiah, Matthew invented a celestial event to convince his readers of Jesus’ importance.
 
Astronomers even make a mistake about the date. Our year dating system was invented in 525 by a Scythian monk called Dionysius Exiguus. He based it on the assumed age of Jesus, by then thought to be in Heaven (we still keep to this system which was adopted by Bede in the 8th century). However, astronomers and many others are misled by the reference in Matthew’s account to king Herod. They assume that it must be Herod the Great, known for his cruelty and who died in 4 BCE. Consequently, they look for a celestial phenomenon prior to that date, perhaps 5 or 6 BCE and sometime they find one. However, ’Herod’ was a family name and all of Herod the Great’s sons also carried the name. So merely calling a king ‘Herod’ was not sufficient identification and Dionysius’ calendar should not be accused of making a mistake. He almost certainly worked from Luke’s account of when John the Baptist began to preach (chapter 3). Note the reference to ‘Herod the Tetrarch’, whose name was actually ‘Antipas’:

'1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judæa, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituræa and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,
2 Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.'

Also a statement about the age of Jesus:

'23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age,'

Tiberias’ 15th year was the year we call, using Dionysius’ system, 28 CE. Making allowances for the period between the appearance of John and Jesus’ mission, his birth must be place in the year 1 BCE (there was no year zero). There is no reason to abandon Dionysius’ calendar and every reason to eschew the idea that he made a mistake. Consequently, even if there had been a celestial phenomenon at the time of Jesus’ birth, astronomers have been looking in the wrong time.

The mistake made by astronomers is a classic example of ‘the law of the instrument’ or over-reliance on a familiar tool. It means that astronomers have been looking at the biblical record only from their own point of view, ignorant of the fact that the record does not lie within their competence. There are other examples of experts in one discipline believing that they can explain something that lies in another discipline. In this case, astronomers have seen what appears to be an astronomical record and assumed that they would be able to explain it. But the star is imaginary. It never really existed.

Please remember this when you next hear, as you will, of an astronomer trying to explain The Star of Bethlehem.


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The Alties

28/8/2015

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Cartridge Save Ltd (http://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/thealties) has offered 13 cash prizes to film buffs who can write an alternative ending to their favourite movie. The grand prix prize is £2000.
          So I have entered an alternative ending, well near the ending, to the SciFi movie Contact (1997), one of my favourite films. The film is based on Carl Sagan’s book of the same name (1985). A SETI scientist, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of intelligent aliens, who send plans for a mysterious machine that would enable humans to contact them.
          Near the end of the film, after the apparent failure of the machine, which carried the protagonist, Dr. Eleanor Arroway (played by Jodie Foster), is grilled by a Congressional investigation. During this grilling, Michael Kitz, the National Security Advisor (played by James Wood), asks her if she believes in God (the conflict between science and religion and the existence of God is a sub-theme in the film). She prevaricates and indicates that she has insufficient information on the matter.
          This always seemed to me to a lost opportunity to bring the conflict between believers and non-believers to a focus. So my alternative is that, when Alloway is asked that question, one that was gratuitous in the circumstances (it had nothing to do with her report and the operation of the machine), she responds with a question of her own, viz: ‘Which god would that be?’ Kitz has made three unjustified assumptions all at once, and scientists always question assumptions. He assumed that there is only one god, that we all know who that god is and that every believer worships that god. Indeed, ‘In God we trust’ was adopted as the official motto of the US in 1956, replacing ‘E pluribus unum’, which was adopted when the Great Seal was created and adopted in 1782. Since 1957, ‘In God we trust’ has also appeared on all US banknotes. However, nowhere is that god defined. It might be a reference to the god of the Bible and Jesus, but that would be an assumption. So Alloway’s new response is entirely justified.
    My alternative screenplay continues with a theological debate between Kitz and Alloway, where Kitz’s ignorance becomes obvious and the session breaks up in confusion, with the audience getting a glimpse of the stance of scientists, most of whom are non-religious, and a government playing lip-service to an ill-defined religion. The alien in the film, in the shape of Alloway’s dead father, showed no hint of a belief in any god.

    The deadline for entries to the competition is 4 September and have to be emailed to [email protected].
 

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Religion in schools

9/6/2015

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As a member of the Edinburgh Secular Society, I am frustrated by our inability to get the attention of the Scottish Government to the problem of religion in Scottish schools (responsibility for education is devolved to Scotland).

It is bad enough that the Roman Catholic Church is allowed to run its own schools at public expense, with the result that children are divided at an early stage into one of two opposed sects of Christianity. Worse is the law (The Education (Scotland) Act 1980) which continues to impose a statutory duty on local authorities to provide religious observance (RO) in Scottish schools. The relevant section (8) of the Act is curiously worded under the heading ‘Religious instruction’ and notes that it has been the custom in the public schools of Scotland for religious observance to be practised and for instruction in religion to be given to pupils. It goes on to permit local authorities to continue with this custom and declares that it will be unlawful to discontinue the practice. Section 9 of the Act does allow parents to have their children withdrawn from RO, but which child wants to singled out for exclusion? This is not a popular option and is little used. Section 9 also suffers from sexism (only referring to male children) and seems to allow withdrawal from both Religious Education and RO, but not one or the other.

The above law does make one exception to holding RO in schools. It allows a local authority to discontinue the practice but only if a resolution in favour of such discontinuance is passed by the authority and if it then submits a proposal for discontinuance to all the electors in that authority area and the majority voting approve. This poll has to be by ballot.

    Edinburgh Secular Society has begun to test this exception by petitioning The City of Edinburgh Council to pass such a resolution and hold the appropriate ballot. However the Council has dragged its feet by passing the problem to its Education, Children and Families Committee, which in turn decided that it needed to consult all head teachers about what takes place in their assemblies. We are still waiting for the result of that consultation.

    In February 2011, the Learning Directorate (Curriculum Division) of the Scottish Government issued a note to all Directors of Education and all head teachers clarifying the requirements for RO. It stated its belief that learning and teaching can build on Scotland’s ‘strong Christian traditions without compromising them’ and encouraged non-denominational schools (no mention of Catholic schools) to draw upon the rich resources of this tradition when planning religious observance. It declared that every school ‘should’ (i.e. must) provide opportunities for religious observance at least six times in a school year as part of their normal assemblies. This applies even to primary schools.

When at least half and probably two-thirds of Scots now have no religion and the number admitting to being Christians is in decline, this reactionary nonsense is out-of-date. It is not only offensive to those of no religion but to those of non-Christian religions, some of whom now call for their own schools to be funded by the state. The way to undermine society is to allow all sorts of different religious schools; this tendency has to be stopped and the best way is to abolish sections 8 and 9 of the above Education Act. Only the Scottish Government can do that, which is why I have started an online petition calling on it to end compulsory worship in Scottish schools. You can sign the petition by going to the following website:

https://www.change.org/p/end-compulsory-worship-in-scottish-schools-change-the-law-that-presently-requires-compulsory-collective-worship-in-all-scottish-schools

I could do with your support, especially if you live in Scotland and/or have children at school here.

There was a similar petition (now closed) which just called for an end to compulsory worship in schools but with no reference to any laws or to any part of the UK. Education law in England is similar to that in Scotland but under different statutes. That attracted over 11,000 signatures and was featured by the National Secular Society (see http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2014/07/new-petition-calls-for-an-end-to-compulsory-worship-in-schools). It is not clear that the Department of Education is taking any notice and in view of the Prime Minister’s declaration that this is a Christian country, it seems that the petition will be ignored.



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Why we are here

8/1/2015

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In 2010, I won second prize in a competition organised by The Skeptic magazine. The challenge was to write an essay answering the question ‘If There Isn’t a God, Why Bother?’ (see this link).
          In the process, I took pains to explain how unusual humanity is and that we may even be unique in the universe. The reasons for this are complex, but worth consideration.
          We all know that, without the demise of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, mammals could not have emerged as the dominant class and we would not exist. The dinosaurs had ruled the planet for about 165 million years, with no sign of dying out. Without the cosmic collision that destroyed them and much else, they would still rule the Earth.
          The subsequent evolution of various hominins was also not guaranteed. It only occurred because of propitious circumstances, which was also why our particular species evolved to become dominant. But this was not guaranteed. The explosion of the super volcano Toba in Sumatra about 70,000 years ago wiped out many species, with a few of our kind surviving due to their intelligence and survival skills. That event may also have been the trigger to start a migration northwards that led to us living all over the world.
          Some would claim that we evolved our large brains and ability to speak after a long period developing in water (the Aquatic Ape Theory). If so, that would have been ususual and lucky.
          Life on this planet was also lucky. Not only is the solar system in a relatively quiet part of the outskirts of the Galaxy, shielding it from the violence evident nearer the centre, no nearby supernova (exploding star) has sterilised the system. Our sun is well-behaved star with still some 5 billion years of life and Earth is located in a zone where the temperature is not too extreme (Venus is too close and Mars too far for the evolution and sustenance of life). It is also now recognised that without our unusually large Moon, itself the result of a chance collision between the proto-Earth and another large planetismal (Thea), life may not have been able to develop. This is because the Moon stabilises Earth’s rotation        and creates tides in the oceans. Without tides, life in the sea might not have been able to move onto the land. Much of this is explained in something called ‘The Rare Earth Hypothesis’; namely that a system like ours is rare in the universe.
          One scientist has drawn attention to fact that, for the past 7000 years, sea level has been remarkably and unusually stable. He claimed that this may have contributed to the development of civilization. The reason for this is that all the major civilizations developed on coasts, especially on river deltas. Repeated changes in sea level could have inhibited the development of civilization. We have also built our civilization during an interglacial period; we could not have done so with ice sheets covering most of Europe.
          At the end of my essay, I wrote:
 Does it not seem that we have been lucky? Or rather that we owe our existence to a series of fortuitous chance events, events that must be rare in themselves, never mind in combination? If that is true, then we are probably a very rare phenomenon, an intelligent species that has developed advanced technology, even now venturing into space. My guess is that the chance of another such species emerging elsewhere in our Galaxy is almost nil and we may indeed be alone.
          In short, we have won the lottery of life. But let us look at this another way. Modern cosmologists believe that the universe we inhabit, only part of which we can see, is infinite! (That statement deserves its exclamation mark.)
          Now in an infinite universe, anything that is physically possible must happen. Moreover it must occur an infinite number of times. From that perspective, our emergence is no surprise. In every lottery there is always a winner. No matter how lucky it seems that we have been, in an infinite universe, something like us was bound to emerge. That also probably means that the universe contains an infinite number of Earths, all with slightly different histories! (Another exclamation mark is justified.)
          Some have pointed out that life has only been able to develop because the fundamental physical constants of our universe seem fine-tuned to permit it. Slightly different settings of these constants would not have allowed stars, or galaxies, or life to emerge. This seems lucky and some think it is evidence of a designer (The Anthropic Principle). But there is a simpler explanation.
          Cosmologists now believe that many universes emerge from an eternal multiverse existing in many dimensions and that each of these universes has its fundamental constants set at the time of emergence. Multiple universes popping out of a timeless multiverse with different constants must mean that sometime (time is meaningless here) some will emerge that have the constants propitious for life. That is why we are here. We are here because it is possible and inevitable.
          But that does not mean that we will always be here. Financial advisers always warn that ‘past performance is not a guide to future performance’. Likewise, although we have been lucky so far, we might not always be so. We have escaped global thermonuclear war, but only just, and many natural disasters could obliterate our civilisation. Even now, we seem bent on destroying our civilisation by allowing greenhouse gases to proliferate. Uncontrolled global warming has many serious consequences, the worst being the rise in sea level that will inundate major coastal cities. To survive, we will need to take control of the planet, but have we the will to do this? 
           One can sum all this up with the words of a song from the First World War (‘We’re here because we’re here’), which expresses both the resignation and bewilderment of those who find themselves, as we do, in a situation that almost defies explanation.

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Christmas myths

6/12/2014

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I think most people know that the Christian Church adopted 25 December as the birthday of Christ, not because he was known to have been born on that day but because pagans traditionally celebrated the winter solstice (21 December) about that time. The Romans began their week-long festival of Saturnalia on 17 December. Usurping someone else’s festival was an easy way to get them to celebrate your own festival instead.
   
Historians and biblical scholars have long known that the (different) Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke (they do not appear in either Mark or John), probably deriving from a common source, were invented to give Jesus a provenance commensurate with his deification. To do so, they borrowed from other contemporary religions where stories like that of the nativity could be found.
   
All we know of Jesus’ birth is that it must have been in Galilee (all his disciples except Judas were Galilean), probably in Capernaum (‘his own city’, Matt. 9:1), where he preached in the synagogue.
   
The claim that he was born in Bethlehem derives from a prophecy (Mic. 5:2) that the Messiah would ‘come out of’ that city (that doesn’t necessarily mean that he had to be born there). However, it is telling that there is no record of Jesus claiming to come from either Bethlehem or Nazareth (the sobriquet ‘Nazarene’, by which he was known, has nothing to do with Nazareth). That is probably because he was known to come from Galilee.
   
So one can forget the Wise Men, the birth in a stable, the Star of Bethlehem and the extraordinary journeys across Palestine. All were invented and borrowed from contemporary beliefs about other saviour gods, especially Mithras, the god of the Roman army. The Mithraic books tell how, when Mithras was born, a star fell from the sky and was followed by Zoroastrian priests called 'Magi' on their way to worship him. This birth was witnessed by shepherds.
    Some believe that Jesus
was born about 4 BC because of the story of the Massacre of the Innocents by ‘Herod the king’ (assumed to be Herod the Great), who died in that year. Others believe that he was born about 6 AD, because that was the year of the Judean census that (allegedly) caused Joseph to travel to what was thought to be his ancestral home in Bethlehem. However, both these notions are based on myths and misunderstandings. The Jewish historian Josephus appears to know nothing of such a massacre and the taxation in Judaea did not involve the mass migration implied by Luke’s fanciful account.
   
Some astronomers believe that Jesus must have been born in 7 BC when there was a planetary conjunction which they (foolishly) think could account for the Star. This idea goes back at least Johannes Kepler in 1614. They do not realize that the story of the Star was invented from forecast in obscure Jewish books like the Pseudepigrapha and the Talmud.
   
There is no reason to doubt the calculation of the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus who, in what we now call 525 AD but was then the Roman year 754, decided to date years based on the (assumed) age of Jesus (others had done this occasionally before him). He based this on an assumed birth in 1BC. This dating system has been used in Christian countries since the Venerable Bede adopted it in the eighth century and it is now universal. To Christians, Jesus is now 2014 years old; in reality, he died in 33.
   
So let us all celebrate the Winter Solstice and the return of the sun and forget about Christ.  

For more on all this, see my book The Rise and Fall of Jesus.


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September 26th, 2014

26/9/2014

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Jesus and Christianity

On 7 Sep 2014, I spoke to the Edinburgh Secular Society about the life of Jesus and the origin of Christianity.
    The main points of my talk were, firstly, to show that Jesus planned his life to try to fulfil the prophecies about the Messiah (as he saw them) and that resulted in him needing to arrange for his own arrest and crucifixion. He hoped to survive that ordeal, with the use of opium (to seem dead) and revive, so demonstrating resurrection, undermining the authority of the ruling Sadducees. But a coup-de-grace by the execution squad killed him and all hopes of success.
    My second main point was to show that the belief that he had survived and been resurrected actually began when the disciples met an old shepherd in Galilee, mistaking him for their master.
    Consequently, one can claim that Christianity began by mistake and is founded on Jesus' failed bid for supreme power.

I seem to be the only person making these claims.
    The talk was videoed and you can see it here. The talk lasts 58 mins.
  





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    I am a science writer and the author of four books and over 160 articles on diverse subjects, mainly investigations of one sort or another, and very many letters to the press.

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