Sol Invictus - Sol Invictus and Christianity and Judaism

Sol Invictus and Christianity and Judaism

The Philocalian calendar of 354 AD gives a festival of "Natalis Invicti" on 25 December. There is limited evidence that this festival was celebrated before the mid 4th century AD.

Whether the 'Sol Invictus' festival "has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date" of Christmas (as per the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia) or not has been called into question by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who challenged this theory by arguing that a December 25 date was determined simply by calculating nine months after March 25, regarded as the day of Jesus’ conception (the Feast of the Annunciation).

In the 5th century, Pope Leo I (the Great) spoke of how the celebration of Christ's birth coincided with the sun's position increasing in the sky in several sermons on the Feast of the Nativity. Here is an excerpt from his 26th sermon:

But this Nativity which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature, there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery.

According to the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia, a standard library reference, in an article on Constantine the Great:

"Besides, the Sol Invictus had been adopted by the Christians in a Christian sense, as demonstrated in the Christ as Apollo-Helios in a mausoleum (c. 250) discovered beneath St. Peter's in the Vatican." Indeed "...from the beginning of the 3rd century "Sun of Justice" appears as a title of Christ".

Some consider this to be in opposition to Sol Invictus. Some see an allusion to Malachi 4:2.

Figures of Helios or Sol Invictus also appear in several of the very few surviving schemes of decoration surviving from Late Antique synagogues, including Beth Alpha, Husefah (Husefa), Hamat Tiberias and Naaran, all now in Israel. He is shown, with the usual radiate halo, and sometimes in a quadriga, in the central roundel of a circular representation of the Zodiac or the Seasons, in floor-mosaics. Late Antique Hellenized Jewish communities, even in these small and largely agricultural locations, appear to have been relaxed about adopting elements of Hellenistic iconography in prominent positions, but ones (on the floor) that carried no connotation of reverence.

A scribe annotated a manuscript of a work by Syrian bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi in the 12th century as follows:

"It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day."