The first use of December 25th as the Christmas day dates from Rome in the year 336.

To the Pagan Romans, it was the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The Emperor Constantines family had worshipped the sun; his vision of the cross came to him from the sun. It was easy to transfer the festival to the Sun of Righteousness. Luke and Acts written by same person, admits he is not an eyewitness in opening of Luke. In the Gospel of John, nuh-uh, Jesus says "I am," he's the one who spoke to Moses. It's no wonder that the Jews tried to stone him "Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day, he saw it and was glad." Then the Jews said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to him, "Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am." There's that strong Christological claim of Jesus being God himself, and of course they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. Notice there are these things going on, Jesus speaks in riddles in the Gospel of John Council of Nicaea in 325 of our era CE, there was a council called together by the Emperor Constantine who was tired of all these Christians squabbling, especially about Christology, and he got bishops and people from around the empire, and he tried to get them to come to an agreement. They wrote what has come down to be called the Nicene Creed. At Jesus trial before Pilate none of his disciples were there, so how does anyone know what happened?
Eventually, Church leaders devised four criteria that they applied to books to determine whether they could be accepted as Scripture. 1. A book had to be ancient (from near the time of Jesus). 2. It had to be written by an apostle (or a companion of the apostles). 3. It had to be widely used throughout the entire Church (not just alocal favorite). 4. And most important, it had to be orthodox (meaning that it taughtthe right belief).

BOOKS: Gospel Parallels byBurton Hamilton Throckmorton Nag Hammadi

Paul knows that the Romans crucified Jesus. Crucifixion is not a Jewish punishment, that would be stoning. So when the Jewish leaders wanted to punish somebody with death in Jerusalem they got a mob together and they stoned the person. Stoning was the Jewish means of capital punishment; crucifixion was the Roman means of capital punishment, and Paul knows this. Is he here talking about these authorities who crucified Jesus, that is the Romans? Pilate obviously is the governor of Judea at the time, but Pilate was simply the representative of the Senate and the emperor. Is Paul blaming the Senate and the Emperor for the crucifixion of Jesus here? What does he mean by rulers? You have some scholars who use this text to say, well even in spite of what Paul says in Romans 13, Paul doesn't have any great love in his heart for Rome. He still believes that they are evil powers who crucified Jesus; they're in the process of perishing as we speak, and they will certainly be destroyed by God when Jesus comes back on the clouds with his holy angel army. John The Baptist was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, anticipating an imminent end of the world, who baptized people who repented of their sins in preparation for the coming onslaught. 1. Jesus was born Jewish and raised Jewish. He followed Jewish customs, kept the Jewish Law, became a Jewish teacher, and acquired Jewish followers, whom he taught his own vision of what it meant to be an observant Jew, one who truly kept the Law God had given the Jewish people through Moses. 2. Throughout his lifetime, Jesus preached his message to Jews, and at the end of his life, he was executed by the Romans for claiming to be the Jewish king. 3. From beginning to end, Jesus was thoroughly and ineluctably Jewish
Let the one without sin among
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you be the first to cast a stone at her. The story, however, is not found in the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Moreover, the writing style (in the Greek) is significantly different from the writing style of the rest of the Gospel. In addition, the story breaks the flow of the narrative of John 78, where it is found. In other words, if you take the story out of John, the context makes much better sense, as the story immediately before the account flows better directly into the story immediately after it. For these and numerous other reasons there is virtually no debate among New Testament scholars that this story, as wonderful, powerful, and influential as it is, was not originally part of the New Testament. It was added by a scribe. The man at the tomb instructs the women to go to the disciples and tell them that Jesus will go before them to Galilee and that they are to meet him there. But instead of telling the disciples, the women fled from the tomband they did not say anything to anyone, for they were afraid (16:8). And thats where
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the Gospel ends. There is definitely a resurrection of Jesus here.

But the disciples never learn of it, and there is no account of Jesuss meeting with any of them. This ending is brilliant. It brings readers up short and makes them say, What??? How could the women not tell anyone? How could no one learn of Jesuss resurrection? How could Jesus not appear to anyone afterwards? Thats it? Thats the end? How could that be the end? Scribes felt the same way. And, different scribes added different endings to the Gospel. The ending that became the most popular throughout the Middle Ages was found in the manuscripts used by the translators of the King James Version in 1611, so that it became widely familiar to English Bible readers. In an additional twelve verses the women (or at least Mary Magdalene) do go tell the disciples, who do then see Jesus and become convinced he has been raised. It is in these verses that we find the famous words of Jesus that those who believe in him will be able to speak in foreign tongues, pick up serpents, and drink poison without suffering any harm. But Jesus never said these words, and Mark never claimed he did. They were added to Mark by a later scribe and then recopied over the years.18 This is a fabricated story that has been put into the Bible by a copyist who falsified the text. One of the most hurtful passages for the cause of women who want to be active in the Christian church occurs in 1 Corinthians 14:3435. Here Paul is recorded as saying: Let the women in the churches keep silent. For it is not permitted for them to speak; instead let them be submissive, just as the law itself says. If they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Women are to be silent and submissive to their husbands. They are not to speak at all in church. This obviously makes it impossible for a woman to utter a prophecy in church, pray publicly and openly in church, or teach in church. Women are not allowed even to ask a question in church. These verses are very much like what one reads in one of the Pauline letters that is not authentic, 1 Timothy, which, as we saw in Chapter 3, also indicates that women are to be subject to men and not to exercise any authority over them (2:1115). But just as 1 Timothy is forged, so too has this passage in 1 Corinthians been falsified. These verses in chapter 14 were not written by Paul. Someone added them to the passage later, after the letter had been placed in circulation. Scholars have adduced many reasons for this view. For one thing, the verses seem to intrude in the passage in which they are found. Immediately before these verses Paul is talking about prophecy in the church; immediately afterwards he is talking about prophecy. But this passage on women interrupts the flow of the argument. Take them out, and it flows much better. Even more, it is hard to believe that Paul would tell women that they could not speak in church here in 1 Corinthians 14, when just three chapters earlier he indicated that they could
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indeed do so. In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul urges women who pray and prophesy in church to do so only with veils on their heads. If they were allowed to speak in chapter 11, how could they be told not to speak in chapter 14? It makes better sense that those scholars are right who think that the verses were not originally part of the text of 1 Corinthians. Someone has falsified the book by adding the verses to it, making the passage say what these copyists wanted it to say rather than allowing Paul to say what he meant to say.19 Plagia