Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions by T. W. Doane

dawn_[473:3] on the 25th day of December. Now, this is the _Sun's birthday_. At the commencement of the sun's apparent annual revolution round the earth, he was said to have been born, and, on the first moment after midnight of the 24th of December, all the heathen nations of the earth, as if by common consent, celebrated the accouchement of the "_Queen of Heaven_," of the "_Celestial Virgin of the Sphere_," and the birth of the god _Sol_. On that day the sun having fully entered the winter solstice, the _Sign of the Virgin_ was rising on the eastern horizon. The woman's symbol of this stellar sign was represented first by ears of corn, then with a new-born male child in her arms. Such was the picture of the _Persian_ sphere cited by Aben-Ezra: "The division of the first decan of the Virgin represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair, sitting in a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an infant called IESUS by some nations, and _Christ_ in Greek."[474:1] This denotes the _Sun_, which, at the moment of the winter solstice, precisely when the Persian magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern horizon. On this account he was figured in their astronomical pictures under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin.[474:2] Thus we see that Christ Jesus was born on the same day as Buddha, Mithras, Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Bacchus, Adonis and other _personifications of the_ SUN.[474:3]