Original sentence: (see Chronology of the Ancient Near East).Indeed, a re-dating on the order of 300 years, as they proposed, is strongly rejected by leading Egyptologists and Assyriologists, notably Prof.Kenneth Kitchen.More recent theories, notably those of Egyptologists David Rohl and Peter James are viewed with cautious interest by the scientific community but have not gained widespread acceptance.Popular writers such as Immanuel Velikovsky, Donovan Courville and others believe that the lack of archeological attestation of biblical figures is due to errors in the traditional chronology or the dating of archaeological strata.Still, celebrating the birth of Jesus was not adopted or known to be practiced by Christians until the second century.The Christ myth theory is that the Jesus we know from the Bible today has many elements that come from the mystery cults.The New Testament (written in Greek) indicates that the largest number of early Christians came from the conversion of adherents to Judaism.They also point out that even in European traditions, the celebration of the date of Jesus' birth (midnight 24 December) is taken from a pre-existing pagan practice (the winter solstice).They retained many of their religious practices: singing, the playing of music, art, etc.They suggest that this process of assimilation is similar to the way in which peoples in Latin America and Africa have often incorporated elements of their traditional faiths into their newly-adopted Christianity.Velikovsky's theories were rejected outright by the scientific community and refuted in detail (see Immanuel Velikovsky).Within a short time after the Resurrection, Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and converted Gentiles of various religious backgrounds