CosmosJesus as the Sun
Jesus as the Sun
Also called: Solar Christ · Sun of God
Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christian faith.In this narrative he is a sun god, the sun's yearly movement rewritten as a human story.
Established facts
Jesus was a Jewish preacher active in 1st-century Palestine.The New Testament's four Gospels record his life.Emperor Aurelian made Sol Invictus, Rome's sun god, an official cult in 274.Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313.'Solar mythology' is a 19th- and 20th-century interpretive theory that reads mythical figures as the sun's movement.Gerald Massey and Godfrey Higgins advocated this theory.Mainstream historical scholarship today does not accept it.
The sun that halts at the winter solstice and rises again is said to be the skeleton of the Jesus story.
| The Sun | Jesus |
|---|---|
| Winter solstice, three-day stop= | Death, resurrection after three days |
| Rises again December 25= | Birthday |
| Spring equinox, day wins= | Easter |
| Passes through the 12 signs= | 12 disciples |
| 4 equinoxes and solstices= | 4 Gospel authors |
| Halo (corona)= | Aureole |
This is exactly the correspondence table the sources draw. Comparison with the original texts is missing.
| Horus | Mithras | Jesus |
|---|---|---|
| December 25= | December 25= | December 25 |
| Virgin Isis= | Born from a rock= | Virgin Mary |
| 12 disciples= | 12 disciples= | 12 disciples |
| Rose after three days= | Resurrection= | Rose after three days |
Many of the cells in this table are absent from the Egyptian and Persian originals. The sources copy cells from each other that were invented in 20th-century books.
In this narrativeGods rising and falling through the day and the seasons
In this narrative Jesus is the story of the sun rising and falling across the sky.In Egyptian mythology, Ra, Horus, Set, and Osiris each take one of the four moments of the day1.Ra governs noon, Horus 6 a.m., Set 6 p.m., and Osiris midnight1.The dung beetle's habit of rolling dung uphill and dropping it is also likened to the sun's rise and fall1.Within the same framework, Horus, Jesus, Mithras, Buddha, Krishna, and Hermes are lined up together2.All six gods share twelve disciples, a December 25 birth, and a resurrection after three days2.So in this picture Jesus is not one man but one of the sun's many names.
In this narrativeDeath and resurrection at the winter solstice
From December 22 to 24, the sun stops moving near the Southern Cross1.From December 25 it begins moving north again1.This picture reads this three-day stop as 'the sun died on the cross for three days'1.It reads the sun moving again on December 25 as being 'born again'1.Rome set December 25 as the birthday of the sun god Sol Invictus in 2742.Constantine later moved this date to Christ's birthday23.Scripture has no verse stating Jesus's birthday3.
In this narrativeThe halo and sun/son
Christian icons always draw Jesus with a round halo behind his head1.This picture reads that halo as the sun1.The English words sun and son overlap in sound in Old English1.So 'son of God' becomes the same phrase as 'sun of God'1.The custom of eating lamb at Easter is also mapped to the moment the sun enters Aries at the spring equinox1.Sunday worship also comes from the name 'Sun's day'2.The round monstrance a pope holds, and the gesture of raising it overhead, are also read as reenacting the sun's position2.
In this narrativeRebuttal and a different branch
There is a rebuttal to this solar-mythology reading.Namu Wiki's entry on the 'Jesus myth theory' classifies it as pseudohistory1.It notes that the historical reality of the Mithraic faith and the lack of scriptural basis for the solar reading need to be kept separate1.Historian Kim Hyun-il explains Rome's native sun god and the Sol Invictus imported from the East as belonging to different lineages2.It is true that Rome elevated a sun god as chief, but he explains the reason through pantheon politics2.So the equation 'Jesus equals the sun' and the fact 'Rome worshipped a sun god' are stories on two different levels.
Connected concepts
- Winter Solstice →The three-day stop at the winter solstice becomes the three days of Jesus's death and resurrection.This is where the sun story narrows into the story of the season.
- Zodiac and the Twelve Disciples →Where the twelve disciples become the twelve zodiac signs, the sun story crosses into the map of the constellations.
- Mithras →Mithras is also, within the same framework, a sun god born on December 25.He is a name that stands alongside Jesus.
- Constantine →The claim that Constantine set December 25 as Christ's birthday links Jesus to the political history of Rome.
- Virgin Birth →Along with Horus and Mithras, Jesus also shares a virgin birth.
Leads here fromAnkhFour EvangelistsHorus