Archive for the ‘Panthera’ Category

I recently received the following e-mail message from a reader of my book in Germany. I thought his research and comments were worth passing along. Some of the issues he raises I have addressed in previous posts at this site, but I pass it on as is, unedited, for what it might contribute to the discussion:

A similar ‘pun theory’ like that discussed in your blog was proposed by Samuel Krauss in his award-winning work “Griechische und lateinische Lehnwoerter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum” (2 voll., Berlin, 1898–1899, reprr. Hildesheim, 1964, 1984). He explained the name Pandera as a malapropism of pornos (paramour) which was insistantly rebutted by Immanuel Loew, with whose commentaries Krauss’ work was published (vol. 2, pp. 464, 614). Their terse arguments in a dictionary of greek loanwords in Aramaic texts seem to draw upon philological reasons like the other, the ‘parthenos-pun-theory’. Krauss later wrote that the Jewish anti-Christian polemic had made a pornogeneia (fornication birth) out of the parthenogeneia (virgin birth) (Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen. Berlin, 1902; Ndr. Hildesheim, 1994). This brings the anti-Christian polemic of the Panthera-story to the point but does not support the philological reasoning in the ‘pun-theory’.

However philology in my view provides as weak an argument against the ‘pun theory’ as it does in support of it. Satirical playing on words does not care about philological accuracy. The only persuasive argument against the ‘pun theories’ remains the frequent occurrence of the name Pantera in Latin, mainly epigraphical, sources as cited by Deissmann. He repeated his arguments in another work (“Licht vom Osten. Das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten Texte der hellenistisch-römischen Welt“, Tübingen, 4th ed., 1923, p. 57) and added, relying on a postcard message by W.W. Baudissin, an explanation of the name Abdes which he reads as ’BD-’S, meaning “servant of Isis”. The cult of Isis, Deissmann adds, had been widespread among the Phoenecians (to which the Sidonians belonged). If this is plausible (and here strictly philological/onomastic reasoning would apply) Tib. Iul. Abdes Pantera hardly was a Jew. But at the same time there is no proof of him being a non-Jew. He might well have ‘converted’ to Judaism like many of his contemporaries, the so-called “God-fearers”. (I admittedly don’t know whether it is likely that a God-fearer keeps his gentile name after the ‘conversion’.)

An important aspect of the ‘Abdes Pantera story’, namely the history of his unit, the cohors I sagittariorum seems to be somewhat disregarded in your book but this lack occurs in all the other works I read about the Panthera-story as well. I was not yet able to trace back the claim that this cohort had been transfered from Syria to the Rhine. Deissmann only quotes an oral communication of Alfred von Domaszewski (who told him that the unit had been stationed in Syria, transfered in 6 CE. to Dalmatia and 3 years later to Bingerbrueck). This information is time and again repeated in the literature without giving any reference to sources. Obviously it would be crucial for the claim that Abdes Pantera was Jesus’ father to prove that his unit had indeed been stationed somewhere in Palestine, or, better in Galilee around Jesus’ date of birth. Lutz Greisiger

I think I have to agree with Mr. Greisiger that philological arguments are not decisive against the use of a “pun” per se, and that Deissmann’s citations of the name are more decisive. However, as I have pointed out in several posts, I still think the strongest argument against the “pun theory” for the origin of the name Pantera for Jesus’ father, and the designation “Jesus son of Pantera,” is that Christian apologists such as Origen and Epiphanius, in countering the charge took it seriously as a name, even arguing it was part of the genuine geneaological record of Jesus’ ancestors. And I also pointed out in my book that we now know of a Jewish ossuary, found in Jerusalem, with the name Pantera. This gets even closer to “home” than Deissmann’s Latin epigraphs.

On the history of the Cohort of our Sidonian Pantera I know little beyond what Deissmann reports though I too have noticed that everyone just passes on what he had by oral communcation without documentation. I am not at all convinced that Deissmann’s postcard message that Abdes=Servant of Isis is valid. I have discussed some other possibilities in various Blog posts here. Likewise I don’t think we should assume in speculating about the Sidonian Pantera is that he was necessarily already in the army around the time of Jesus’ birth. What we need to determine, and I think it can be done from evidence related to the cemetery “excavation” in 1859, such as it was, is the dating of the tombstones and thus the approximate date of Abdes Pantera’s death. I hope to be able to write something about that in future posts.

As some of you know, and as I mention in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, the most commonly accepted explanation for the tradition that Jesus is “son of Pantera” is that the word pantera is a pun for the Greek word parthenos or “virgin” in Greek and not a “real name.” In other words, the Jewish enemies of Jesus were making fun of the idea of Jesus being the “son of a virgin” by called him the “son of a panther,” or a lusty animal.

I am amazed at how this explanation, which I consider to be wholly without any historical or linguistic basis, has become so widespread. I can’t tell you the number of reviewers of my book who have matter-of-factly pointed out, apparently Dr. Tabor is not even aware of the origin of this term and mistakenly thinks it might refer to an historical person! Even major scholars pass on the explanation as if the matter is settled. I think many of them have been influenced by Joseph Klausner, the Israeli/Jewish scholar whose book Jesus of Nazareth (published in Hebrew in 1929) was one of the earliest treatments of Jesus in the light of Jewish sources. As I have pointed out in previous posts on this Blog, as well as in my book, Adolf Diessmann in 1906 showed conclusively that the name “Pantera” is a real name, and further, that it was favored by Roman soldiers.

So the question arises–where did the pantera=parthenos explanation originate? I knew it was not ancient but I was not sure how far it went back since no one who uses it ever gives a source, but just passes it on as if it is self-evident. Recently one of my graduate students, Chad Day, who is independently working on Jewish traditions about Jesus in antiquity, passed on the following to me. I want to thank him for his good sleuthing work, though we are not sure we have yet arrived at the one person who first came up with the “pun” explanation. Here is what Chad Day sent on to me:

The Parthenos pun explanation seems to go back at least to Nitzsch and Bleek (Nitzsch, K. I. “Appendix to Bleek.” Page 116 in Studien und Kritiken zur Theologie und Philosophie. Edited by J. Frauenstadt. Berlin: Voss, 1840). Nitzsch (Nitzsch, Karl Immanuel, 1787-1868) seems to be the one that influenced Joseph Klausner.I found this in Heinrich Laible’s “Jesus Christus im Talmud,” 1893. Interestingly, as one of the most rabid Christian apologists (as well as cunningly anti-Semitic) of the bunch of turn-of-the-century scholars commenting on Pantera, Laible finds Nitzsch’s argument about the Parthenos pun totally unconvincing, primarily on philological grounds. However, he does not mention whether this pun business was initiated by Nitzsch. I seem to recall in my recent reading that they did in fact receive this “explanation” from another source (and one which was probably apologetic in some modern fashion). You are quite right that such explanations do often become consensus overnight without any serious investigation, or in this case, perhaps philological logic.

Klausner does indeed take this “pun explanation” right from Nitszch and Bleek (see p. 24, Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth), thus propagating the idea even more widely, because his work was published in English in 1957, whereas the important work of Krauss and Strack on this issue was not available to the English-speaking world. Strack (Die Haretiker, 1913) is still only in German. Part of the Krauss volume of course was presented by Horbury just a few years ago, but the consensus explanation is now firmly implanted, especially since Klausner offhandedly remarks that Herford’s (1903) argument against this pun is unconvincing.

Another interesting aspect of this consensus has to do with the intended audience (and thus this speaks to bias) of Klausner’s now famous treatment of Jesus, namely that he wrote for a “Hebrew” audience. I would argue that this gave his formulations a certain credibility over against Herford’s lenghty (and sometimes anti-Semitic) treatment and conclusions. This business of “overnight” consensuses on some issues is grounded in decidedly unscientific (as well as unscholarly) assertions. Apparently Nitasch attempted to read the Greek panthera as the equivalent of Latin lupa–which means “she-wolf” or “prostitute,” thus making the epithet (or what we are calling the “pun”) “Son of the Prostitute.” Now Nitzsch (and later Klausner) wants to understand this pun as an anti-Christian slogan in response to the early Christian practice of calling Jesus by the title, “Son of the Virgin.” The problem is that we have not even one example of this practice in order to give warrant to the notion that such an experssion became the basis for punning a counter-slogan? This “pun” seems to be thoroughly modern, and frankly, quite apologetic, from those who want to dismiss the “Jesus son of Pantera” designations as having any possible historical basis. Nonetheless, from Celsus through Epiphanius as well as the Rabbis (i.e., second through the fifth century), Panthera was understood as a name of a person, not merely a noun or adjective. In fact, some of the Church Fathers go to great lengths to “explain away” this name as it concerns the historical figure of Jesus. And Deissman, just 100 years ago, should have effectively laid to rest the notion that the name Pantera is a made-up pun.

Thanks to Chad Day for this information.

Jesus was born of a woman, of that everyone but the most extreme docetic Gnostic would seem to agree. But how was it that Mary became pregnant?

There are three basic positions that have been offered in response to the two birth stories we get in Matthew and Luke: 1) Jesus had no human father; 2) Jesus is in fact the biological son of Joseph; 3) Jesus is the biological son of an unnamed male under unknown circumstances.

The first option takes us out of the realm of history into the arena of myth and symbol and even those who would take the reports in Matthew and Luke literally, that Mary became pregnant without a male, would have to admit that such “divine” conceptions are otherwise known to us in a host of Greco-Roman stories of the supernatural births of heros, demi-gods, and divine men, sired by Gods. Generally speaking such tales tend to be alien to most forms of ancient Judaism, other than tales of humans who are the offspring of “angels,” which do appear to stem from similar conceptual realities. One can hardly expect a modern historian to take such reports as matters of serious and rational investigation.

As I point out in my book, one possible purpose of the “virginal conception” story in Matthew and Luke is to affirm the “divine” origin of Jesus–that he is in some special way the “Son of God” in that his conception is not through any human male. It is entirely possible that this is all one should derive from those stories. Thus we are left with the choice of taking the tale literally or metaphorically. Either way the “virgin conception” of Jesus would be a way of expressing the extraordinary nature of Jesus.

One might well leave it at that and most historians would opt for the most simple explanation–since Mary is eventually wedded to Joseph, whatever the circumstances, he is the most likely father.

However, there are some of us who are intrigued with the core of the Matthean/Lukan story–namely, that Mary becomes pregnant before her union with Joseph and though he goes ahead with the marriage he is not the father. Jane Schaberg has probably offered the most extensive argument for this option in her excellent study, The Illegitimacy of Jesus (Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). I highly recommend this book although I differ in the end with Jane’s conclusions.

Although the “Jesus son of Pantera” sources, dating from the 2nd century AD, offer a “name” of a father, this option itself does not need to have any connection to a Roman soldier, Pantera or otherwise. The notion of an unnamed and unknown father of Jesus is worth considering on its own rights.

Here, of course, we enter the realm of pure speculation, since those of us who are inclined to the view that Jesus had a human father, and Joseph took Mary as his wife, despite her pregnancy before their union, know absolutely nothing about the circumstances of the pregnancy. It is even possible that Matthew and Luke’s report that Mary became pregnant while betrothed is an invention of these writers to bolster the case that God must have been the father. After all, who could accuse such a pious woman as the mother of Jesus of immorality? And would that not make Jesus a bastard or mamzer? Schaberg has even suggested that Mary might have become pregnant by rape, but the birth is “sanctified” by God (and Joseph!) as an act of unconditional love and grace.

I am inclined to the view that Joseph was not the father and that Jesus faced throughout his life the sigma of not having his father around, as well as rumors that his mother had acted immorally. But as we try to imagine possible circumstances leading to Mary’s pregnancy before her union with Joseph (which was after Jesus’ birth according to Luke), it is entirely possible that she evaluated the father and the pregnancy as something moral and righteous and taught Jesus growing up that his birth was honorable and sanctioned by God. Perhaps her parents had intended that she marry Joseph, who might have been older, and she had come to be attached to another. Maybe she had her own ways of processing the resulting scandal of her pregnancy than that of a “fallen woman” who had succumbed to sexual immorality. If there was such a father he seems to have disappeared from the picture and we can know nothing with certainly about him. In our earliest report of “the family,” in Mark 6, Jesus is simply the “son of Mary.” Joseph is never mentioned anywhere in Mark, nor is any other father. I think it is potentially very important to consider the potential psychological effects upon Jesus that this view of his circumstances implies: growing up “fatherless” in that society, but believing in his “divine” calling, honoring his mother as a pious woman, and facing the scorn of society. There are prophetic passages with which Jesus identified that fit like a glove–was he not indeed one “despised of the nation” but destined to rule over all Israel, and the entire world? Was he not the “stone” which the builders rejected, destined to become the chief cornerstone?

The matter of Pantera is an entirely separate issue. Those who scoff at the story having any possible historicity are mistaken I think to take the “slanderous” version, passed on by Celsus, as the most likely tale. By that time the “Jesus on of Pantera” story had become the tale of the Roman soldier seducing Mary. Why give that any historical value whatsoever? It is late, legendary, and derivative. The two elements that might be historical are the “name” itself, and the fact that this name is apparently a favorite of Roman soldiers. Thus the case of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, who died in Germany sometime in the 1st century AD, simply offers us a model to think about. Whoever Jesus father might have been, and at whatever age, he well might have subsequently ended up in the Roman army–thus serving as a basis of the garbled story that Celsus passes on, expanded in later medieval Jewish tales that get more and more outrageous. In that sense I have resisted the facile summaries of my book as “claiming that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier.” That charge alone hardly covers the range of possibilities and even probabilities.

My inclination, and I choose this word deliberately, because no one really knows, is that Jesus was born of an unknown father, in unknown circumstances, and that Joseph takes Mary as his wife despite her pregnancy by another. My assumption is that neither Mary nor Jesus considered his conception as an immoral act but somehow destined and sanctioned by God. And finally, yes, I think it is possible that the father’s name was Pantera–whether such a one is known or unknown to us.

As I pointed out in a recent post on this Blog, the term “Jesus son of Pantera” comes up in 2nd century AD Greek and Jewish sources, including texts associated with stories set in the city of Sepporis, just four miles from Nazareth where Jesus grew up. In chapter 3 of The Jesus Dynasty, titled “An Unnamed Father of Jesus” I discuss the Pantera tradition, including the oft heard assertion, that the name “Pantera” is a pun of Jewish enemies of the Christians of the Greek word parthenos or virgin. It is strange how often this assertion gets repeated, though I think it has no basis either in history or linguistics. When early Christians countered the charge that Jesus was the “son of Pantera” they took the name seriously, not as a pun, and asserted that it was indeed a “family name” in the lineage of Jesus. I agree with Deissmann that the evidence shows that it is a “real” name, whether or not we can identify any historical figure to which it referred. In my book I examine the tombstone in Germany of a 1st century Roman soldier from Palestine of that name, not so much to claim it belonged to the “father” of Jesus, but rather to learn what we can of this particular individual.

When I sent in my book manuscript The Jesus Dynasty for publication most of what I knew about the Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera tombstone now located in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, was taken from two main sources: the article by Deissmann, “Der Name Panthera,” published in 1906 (see notes in my book for details), as well as the information he included in his subsequent book, Licht vom Osten/Light from East (1923); and another article by L. Patterson, “Origin of the Name Pantera,” JTS (1917), which built on Deissmann’s work.

As far as I can tell almost everything subsequently published, which is mostly people mentioning the Bingerbrück tombstone in passing, most often to dismiss it as insignificant, relies on these two initial publications. It is from those two articles that the ideas emerge that the names Tiberius Julius indicate manumission under the emperor Tiberius (thus after 14 AD), that our Panthera is a Jew or Semite based on the name Abdes (this is more Patterson than Deissmann), and that the 1st cohort of archers had come to the Rhine in the year 9 AD. Deissmann’s main point, echoed by Patterson, was not to say that this Panthera was the “father” of Jesus, or even had any remote connection to Jesus, but that the name Panthera was not an invention of Jewish enemies of Christianity, spurning the virgin birth, but a real name used by the ancients and thus likely picked up for some reason in the “Yeshua ben Pantera” traditions.

Since that time I have been able to examine much more closely the archives (mostly artifacts, paintings, and articles published in the Bonner Jahrbuch in 1859-1860, at the time of the discovery) that I brought back with me from the museum in Bad Kreusnach where the tomb stones are now housed, and thus to learn much more about the original discovery of this cemetery in 1859 as well as the others buried with Panthera. I was also able to photograph, measure, and study closely the Pantera tombstone itself. All Deissmann apparently had was the inscription itself as published in the catalogue CIL XIII 7514. He seems to know nothing of the discovery, its context, or anything related thereto.

There are lots of interesting avenues of inquiry but at least three issues that need to be resolved are the following:

1. The significance of the Semitic name Abdes. I am not convinced by Deissmann’s postcard correspondent, Count Wolf Baudissin (footnoted in Light from East, p. 74), that Abdes=Eded Isis or “servant of Isis.” I think it is more likely a name, and Deissmann himself refers to another soldier who is called “Cottio the son of Abdes,” which seems to be the same name. It was Patterson that took the name to mean our Panthera was a Jew. I would not go that far but did take it as an indication of at least a “Semitic” background. I have also wondered if the name might be related to Sbedsdas or “Zebedee,” which is found on another soldier’s tombstone in the area, who was from Tyre, which would make it more akin to Zebdas from the Hebrew root Zabad (=Doros/gift) in Hebrew.

2. Do the names Tiberius Julius indicate manumission or perhaps something else? I went with the freed slave suggestion, which seemed to have been so confidently asserted by Deissmann and Patterson, but now tend to doubt that such is the case. Our Abdes Pantera might have taken on these names much later in life, even at retirement, for reasons having nothing to do with having been a freed slave, but perhaps just as a way of honoring the emperor Tiberius, celebrating citizenship, or otherwise celebrating a higher status than that of a commoner. One very well known figure from antiquity with that name was the famous nephew of Philo, Tiberius Julius Alexander.

3. What is the evidence for Deissmann’s assertion that that particular cohort of archers had come to Dalmatia (Croatia) in the year A.D. 6 from Palestine and moved to the Rhine/Nahe river area in A.D. 9? He refers to a source by Domaszewski but gives no details in the citation, so I take it this source is well known in his time and would be known to Roman historians, which I am not. Of course we should not take 9 AD as the date Abdes Pantera necessarily arrived in the area. The cohort would have been regularly replenished by new recruits throughout the 1st century, once stationed in the area.

Given what we know so far of Abdes Pantera it is difficult to date him more precisely. We know he was from Sidon in Palestine, that he served in the army for forty years and that he died at age 62. Whether he might have been retired at the time he died or not we can not be sure, so accordingly, we can not be sure at what age his 40 year service began or when he took on the name Tiberius Julius, other than to place it sometime between the years of the reign of the emperor: 14-37AD.

I can add, just for interest, that three large tombstones, Pantera among them, were found on October 19, 1859 about 300 yards from the Nahe River in connection with the construction of the Bingerbrück railway station. The first two, individuals named Hyperanor and Julia Quintia, were in their vertical positions but the third one, Abdes, was slanted. The foundations of all three were at the same level, and all three were headless, due to the building in earlier times of an embankment wall. Clay funerary urns were found with vessels as well as coins. These finds have been distributed in a number of museums and I am in the process of trying to locate them all. They will perhaps allow us to date at least the terminus ad quem of the cemetery. Other tombstones were subsequently recovered in the area, which was obviously a Roman cemetery. Four different army units are represented, including the 4th Legion, and the IV Delmatarum, 1 Pannoniorum, and the 1st Sagittariorum cohorts–all known to be in that area during the mid-1st century AD. There is a painting made in 1859 of the discovery:

I believe there is still much to learn about both the cemetery and Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, so stay tuned…It is entirely possible that his funerary urn is still preserved in the archives of one of the museums in Germany.