Concerning this season of celebration, an anonymous Master of Arts of Balliol College, Oxford, in his scholarly treatise, Mankind Their Origin and Destiny, says: "The Romans also had their solar festival, and their games of the circus in honor of the birth of the god of day. It took place the eighth day before the kalends of January--that is, on December 25. Servius, in his commentary on verse 720 of the seventh book of the Æneid, in which Virgil speaks of the new sun, says that, properly speaking, the sun is new on the 8th of the Kalends of January-that is, December 25. In the time of Leo I. (Leo, Serm. xxi., De Nativ. Dom. p. 148), some of the Fathers of the Church said that 'what rendered the festival (of Christmas) venerable was less the birth of Jesus Christ than the return, and, as they expressed it, the new birth of the sun.' It was on the same day that the birth of the Invincible Sun (Natalis solis invicti), was celebrated at Rome, as can be seen in the Roman calendars, published in the reign of Constantine and of Julian (Hymn to the Sun, p. 155). This epithet 'Invictus' is the same as the Persians gave to this same god, whom they worshipped by the name of Mithra, and whom they caused to be born in a grotto (Justin. Dial. cum Trips. p. 305), just as he is represented as being born in a stable, under the name of Christ, by the Christians."

And God appointed the sun4 to be a great sign on the earth for days and for sabbaths and for months and for feasts and for years and for sabbaths of y...

Accordingly, in fifteen years of Tiberius and fifteen years of Augustus; so were completed the thirty years till the time He suffered. And from the...

No, the sun and stars were first created but on the fourth day, out of that very light: There was a light arisen in the seven spirits of nature which...

Moses writeth concerning them thus: And God said; Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, to divide or distinguish the day from the night;...

714 To say: "Born-in-the-night," come ye; N. is born. 714 Ye two women, ye who conceived by day, that ye may be patient and bear him who dwells in...

For it [the Sun] is an Essence like the Light of God, which kindles and enlightens the dark Mind of the Father, from whence, by the Light, there arise...

And on the fourth day He created the sun and the moon and the stars, and set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon all the earth, an...

¶At Jerusalem it was the feast of the dedication. It was winter. Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch.

And we blessed him for ever, and all his seed after him throughout all the generations of the earth, because he celebrated this festival in its season...

Further, others say that He was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi.

Now because this Birth [of the Sun] has a Beginning through the Will of God, and enters again into its Ether, therefore it has not the Virtue or...

And do thou command the children of Israel to observe this festival in all their generations for a commandment unto them : one day s in the year in th...

Thus they spoke while they saw and invoked the coming of the sun, the arrival of day; and at the same time that they saw the rising of the sun, they...

Thus on the fourth day, in the anxious birth or geniture of this world, in the middle point or centre of this world, the SUN is sprung up, and stands...

And he cele- brated this festival every year, seven days with joy, and he called it the festival of the Lord according to the seven days during which ...

Con- sequently, Pentecost would always fall on the same day of the week, Sunday. This accords with the Sadducean view. f> THE, BOOK OF JUBILEES [chap,...

Timaeus: He framed to be the wardress and fashioner of night and day, she being the first and eldest of all the gods which have come into existence...

The creation of the day and the renewal of the month which they might behold

The birth, or the rising or springing up of the seven planets, and of all the stars, is no otherwise than as the life, and wonderful proportion,...

And in the time of Lynceus took place the abduction of Proserpine, and the dedication of the sacred enclosure in Eleusis, and the husbandry of Triptol...