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   

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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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 alternateendings@democracypr.com.