Honestly, this pseudo-historical stuff was something Zeitgeist should have discarded a long time ago.
I never really checked if it was false or not. It does check out with the stars and sun though and these holidays match the Pagan stuff. But feel free to share info about it of course. Always good to be critical of this stuff.
That’s a very religious source 
But I’ll check it.
- The most glaring problem is the son/sun parallel. Saying that the Son dying on a cross actually meant the sun dying on the Southern Cross is clever, but this homonym only works in English. Son/sun sounds identical in modern English, but this is irrelevant because (everybody say it with me) the New Testament wasn’t written in modern English! Take away the homonym, and this story largely falls apart.
Fair point. I also found it a weird assumption that the whole world speaks English.
- Can you can see the constellation of the Southern Cross from the Middle East? Jerusalem is north of latitude 31°, but you must be at 25°N or lower to see it. However, precession has changed this. In the time of Jesus, this constellation would’ve been visible in the Middle East, so this (surprisingly) isn’t a problem.
Also a good point. I also never saw this one in the sky.
- Why the interest in December 25? If the topic is resurrection symbology—Jesus dying on the cross and rising again—that happened at Easter.
As far as I understood the reasoning. It’s about the sun being reborn, after being dead for 3 days (being the darkest days of the year). But the resurrection is only celebrated once the days become longer than the nights. That’s during Easter. Which is never celebrated on the same day, because it has to do with the sun’s position and the moon. It’s also celebrated on a Sunday.
The Orion’s Belt is also visible in the Christmas period and does point towards the sunrise. There is no mention of that in that article. However, the reference of calling the 3 stars in Orion’s Belt the 3 kings is not something ancient. At least, not as far as I can find.
I agree we should be skeptical of “Zeitgeist: The Movie” in any regard, because that whole film has many mistakes. Also this part about religion. But I think the astrological parallels are there. It also has to do with the Christians that sort of hijacked the Pagan believes by putting their religious stuff around the same dates. To ease the transition to a new religion.
It for sure is of no relevance for TZM of course, I fully agree with that!
I’m not sure it’s a religious author.
The middle of it is “Moses was probably a legendary figure”, and it ends with “Skeptical atheists and Christians will both see this as a shaky argument. Perhaps that agreement could lead to the question, why is the Christian story any less so?”
Regardless, Jesus mythicism is just a fringe position in academia, and random astrological extrapolations are grasping at straws.
The website in general I mean:
https://www.patheos.com/about-patheos
That’s religion in a nutshell. It’s all vague and open to interpretation. The astrological stuff, how irrelevant it indeed is in today’s life, does hint at just a bunch of ancients trying to make sense of the world and added a whole religion around it. But yes, it has no relevance with TZM.