Why does the Jesus story resemble the solar year?

In the northern hemisphere the shortest day falls on December 21 or 22.For a few days after that, sunrise and sunset barely shift.Then, from around December 25, the days lengthen noticeably.Ancient people really did treat this as the sun coming back to life.

Jesus's birthday was fixed on December 25 in the fourth century.The Bible gives no date.Rome already kept a festival of the Unconquered Sun on the same day.Historians accept that the two overlap.

The sources travel much further.They set the twelve disciples against the twelve zodiac signs and the four evangelists against the four seasons.The resurrection after three days is read as the three days when the sun appears to stand still.The whole life of Jesus is rewritten as one solar year.

Here is where the checkable and the uncheckable part.The overlap of dates can be checked.So can the fact that twelve appears on both sides.The conclusion that the gospels are a transcription of solar myth has never been established.

This way of reading has a name: solar mythology.It was popular in the late 19th century and is barely used in scholarship today.Many sentences in these sources come straight from books of that era.