Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera ( /pænˈtɛrə/ ; c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman-Phoenician soldier born in Sidon, whose tombstone was found by railworkers in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859.
In October 1859, during the construction of a railroad in Bingerbrück in Germany, tombstones for nine Roman soldiers were accidentally discovered by railworker. [1] [2] One of the tombstones was that of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera and is currently kept in the Römerhalle museum in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. [3]
The inscription (CIL XIII 7514) on the tombstone of Abdes Pantera reads: [2] [4] [5]
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The name Pantera is Greek, although it appears in Latin in the inscription. It was perhaps his last name, and means panther. [2] The names Tiberius Julius are acquired names and were probably given to him in recognition of serving in the Roman army as he obtained Roman citizenship on his honorable discharge from the Legion. [2]
The meaning of the name Abdes is up for speculation. "Abd" in Phoenician means "servant of", and "es" is perhaps short for Eshmoun/Eshmun, a Phoenician god of healing and the tutelary god of Sidon. However, it is also possible that Pantera was ethnically (and/or religiously) Jewish, given his birthplace. Zeichmann points out that the name Abdes is "commonly attested among Jews and others in the Levant" and has direct adaptations in Greek, Hebrew, and several other languages, many of which are Semitic. [6]
Pantera was from Sidonia, which is identified with Sidon in Phoenicia, and joined the Cohors I Sagittariorum (first cohort of archers). [2]
Pantera is not an unusual name, and its use goes back at least to the 2nd century. [7] Prior to the end of the 19th century, at various times in history, scholars had hypothesized that the name Pantera was an uncommon or even a fabricated name; however, in 1891, French archaeologist C. S. Clermont-Ganneau showed that it was a name that was in use in Iudaea by other people and Adolf Deissmann later showed with certainty that it was a common name at the time, and that it was especially common among Roman soldiers, [2] [4] [8] which would also fit the name Pantera, because the standard bearer of a Roman unit wore an animal fur on official occasions. In this case this would have been the fur of a predatory cat.
At that time, Roman army enlistments were for 25 years and Pantera served 40 years in the army until his death at 62. [2] Pantera was most likely the standard bearer (signifer) of his cohort. [8]
A soldier by the name of Pantos/Pantera also appears twice in Ethiopian church documents. In the First Book of Ethiopian Maccabees he is listed as one of three brothers who resists the Seleucid invasion of Judea. [9] Within the text itself he is cited as receiving his name from the act of strangling panthers with his bare hands. This name and personage also appears in the text of the Ethiopian Synaxarion (Tahisas 25), where he is remembered along with his brothers in the canon of Ethiopian saints.
A historical connection from this soldier to Jesus of Nazareth has long been hypothesized by some scholars, based on the claim of an ancient Greek philosopher named Celsus, who, according to Christian writer Origen in his "Against Celsus" (Greek Κατὰ Κέλσου, Kata Kelsou; Latin Contra Celsum ), was the author of a work entitled The True Word (Greek Λόγος Ἀληθής, Logos Alēthēs).
Celsus' work was lost but, in Origen's account of it, Jesus was depicted as the result of an affiliation (non-consensual or consensual) between his mother Mary and a renowned Roman figure in a time of great upheaval. He said that for this reason she was "accused of adultery but had the child by the leader named Panthera". [10] Biblical scholar James Tabor claimed that Tiberius Pantera could have been serving in the region at the time of Jesus's conception, [8] but more recent scholarship has shown this claim to be greatly doubtful. Christopher Zeichmann goes so far as to say: "Where precisely Pantera's unit was located during the years leading up to Jesus' conception is uncertain, but it is beyond doubt that it was not Judaea or Galilee." [6]
Tabor's hypothesis is considered highly unlikely by mainstream scholars given that there is little other evidence to support Pantera's paternity outside of some texts. Some scholars and religious figures postulate Pantera was a Roman ancestor of Jesus but not his father. [2] [11]
Historically, the names Pantera and Yeshu were not unusual in the region and were in use among Jews and Gentiles. [2] [7]
In the 2nd century, Celsus, a Greek philosopher, wrote that Jesus's father was a Roman soldier named Panthera. The views of Celsus drew responses from Origen, who considered it a fabricated story. Celsus' claim is only known from Origen's reply. Origen writes:
Let us return, however, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew, where "the mother of Jesus" is described as having been "turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she had been convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera". [12] [13]
Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan state that given the antagonism of Celsus towards Christianity, his suggestion of the Roman parentage of Jesus might derive from the memory of Roman military operations suppressing a revolt at Sepphoris near Nazareth around the time of Jesus' birth. The "common legionary name" Panthera could have arisen from a satirical connection between the Greek words panthēr meaning "panther, various spotted Felidae" and parthenos meaning "virgin". [14] [15]
The story that Jesus was the son of a man named Pantera is referred to in the Talmud, in which Jesus is widely understood to be the figure referred to as "Ben Stada":
It is taught that Rabbi Eliezer said to the Wise, "Did not Ben Stada bring spells from Egypt in a cut in his flesh?" They said to him, "He was a fool, and they do not bring evidence from a fool." Ben Stada is Ben Pantera. Rabbi Hisda said, "The husband was Stada, the lover was Pantera." The husband was "actually" Pappos ben Judah, the mother was Stada. The mother was Miriam "Mary" the dresser of women's hair. As we say in Pumbeditha, "She has been false to "satath da" her husband." (b. Shabbat 104b) [16]
Peter Schäfer explains this passage as a commentary designed to clarify the multiple names used to refer to Jesus, concluding with the explanation that he was the son of his mother's lover "Pantera", but was known as "son of Stada", because this name was given to his mother, being "an epithet which derives from the Hebrew/Aramaic root sat.ah/sete' ('to deviate from the right path, to go astray, to be unfaithful'). In other words, his mother Miriam was also called 'Stada' because she was a sotah, a woman suspected, or rather convicted, of adultery." [17] A few of the references explicitly name Jesus ("Yeshu") as the "son of Pandera": these explicit connections are found in the Tosefta, the Qohelet Rabbah, and the Jerusalem Talmud, but not in the Babylonian Talmud. [17]
The Toledot Yeshu dates to the Middle Ages and appeared in Aramaic as well as Hebrew as an anti-Christian satirical chronicle of Jesus. It also refers to the name Pantera, or Pandera. [18] [19] [20] The book accuses Jesus of illegitimate birth as the son of Pandera, and of heretical and at times violent activities along with his followers during his ministry. [18] [20]
Raymond E. Brown states that the story of Panthera is a fanciful explanation of the birth of Jesus which includes very little historical evidence. [21] [22] [23] James Tabor suggests that Celsus' information about Jesus' paternity is correct, and argues that Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera's career places him in Judea as a young man around the time of Jesus' conception, so he may have been Jesus' father. [8] This has not gained a wide consensus. Biblical scholar Maurice Casey rejected Tabor's hypothesis and states that Tabor has presented no evidence for Pantera's presence in the region, a conclusion affirmed by Christopher Zeichmann. [11] [6]
Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans state that the Toledot Yeshu consists primarily of fictitious anti-Christian stories based on the ongoing attempt of the Jews to discredit Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah, and that it offers no value to historical research on Jesus. [18] The Blackwell Companion to Jesus states that the Toledot Yeshu has no historical facts and was perhaps created as a tool for warding off conversions to Christianity. [24]
Throughout the centuries, both Christian and Jewish scholars have generally only paid minor attention to the Toledot Yeshu. Robert E. Van Voorst states that the literary origins of Toledot Yeshu cannot be traced with any certainty, and given that it is unlikely to have been written before the 4th century, it is far too late to include authentic remembrances of Jesus. [16] The nature of the Toledot Yeshu as a parody of the Christian gospels is manifested by the claim that the Apostle Peter pretended to be Christian so he could separate them from the Jews and its portrayal of Judas Iscariot as a hero who posed as a disciple of Jesus in order to stop the Christians. [25] [26]
Denial of the virgin birth of Jesus is found among various groups and individuals throughout the history of Christianity. These groups and individuals often took an approach to Christology that understands Jesus to be human, the literal son of human parents.
Biblical conspiracy theories posit that much of what is believed about the Bible is a deception created to suppress a secret or ancient truth. Such conspiracy theories may claim that Jesus really had a wife and children, or that a group such as the Priory of Sion has secret information about the true descendants of Jesus; some claim that there was a secret movement to censor books that truly belonged in the Bible, etc.
Phlegon of Tralles was a Greek writer and freedman of the emperor Hadrian, who lived in the 2nd century AD.
Yeshu is the name of an individual or individuals mentioned in rabbinic literature, thought by some to refer to Jesus when used in the Talmud. The name Yeshu is also used in other sources before and after the completion of the Babylonian Talmud. It is also the modern Israeli spelling of Jesus.
Jacob the heretic is the name given to a 2nd-century heretic whose doings were used as examples in a few passages of the Tosefta and Talmud to illustrate laws relating to dealing with heresy (minut).
Celsus was a 2nd-century Roman philosopher and opponent of early Christianity. His literary work, The True Word, survives exclusively in quotations from it in Contra Celsum, a refutation written in 248 by Origen of Alexandria. The True Word is the earliest known comprehensive criticism of Christianity.
The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew starts with Abraham and works forwards, while Luke works back in time from Jesus to Adam. The lists of names are identical between Abraham and David, but differ radically from that point. Matthew has twenty-seven generations from David to Joseph, whereas Luke has forty-two, with almost no overlap between them or with other known genealogies. They also disagree on who Joseph's father was: Matthew says he was Jacob, while Luke says he was Heli.
In all four canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament, the cleansing of the Temple narrative tells of Jesus expelling the merchants and the money changers from the Temple. The scene is a common motif in Christian art.
Against Celsus, preserved entirely in Greek, is a major apologetics work by the Church Father Origen of Alexandria, written in around 248 AD, countering the writings of Celsus, a pagan philosopher and controversialist who had written a scathing attack on Christianity in his treatise The TrueWord. Among a variety of other charges, Celsus had denounced many Christian doctrines as irrational and criticized Christians themselves as uneducated, deluded, unpatriotic, close-minded towards reason, and too accepting of sinners. He had accused Jesus of performing his miracles using black magic rather than actual divine powers and of plagiarizing his teachings from Plato. Celsus had warned that Christianity itself was drawing people away from traditional religion and claimed that its growth would lead to a collapse of traditional, conservative values.
Raymond Joseph Hoffmann is a historian whose work has focused on the early social and intellectual development of Christianity. His work includes an extensive study of the role and dating of Marcion in the history of the New Testament, as well the reconstruction and translation of the writings of early pagan opponents of Christianity: Celsus, Porphyry and Julian the Apostate. As a senior vice president for the Center for Inquiry, he chaired the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, CSER, where he initiated the Jesus Project, a scholarly investigation into the historicity of Jesus. Hoffmann has described himself as "a religious skeptic with a soft spot for religion".
Jesus was criticised in the first century CE by the Pharisees and scribes for disobeying Mosaic Law. He was decried in Judaism as a failed Jewish messiah claimant and a false prophet by most Jewish denominations. Judaism also considers the worship of any person a form of idolatry, and rejects the claim that Jesus was divine. Some psychiatrists, religious scholars and writers explain that Jesus' family, followers and contemporaries seriously regarded him as delusional, possessed by demons, or insane.
Sefer Toledot Yeshu, often abbreviated as Toledot Yeshu, is a medieval text which presents an alternative, anti-christian view, as well as a disputed biography of Jesus Christ. It exists in a number of different versions, none of which is considered either canonical or normative within Rabbinic literature, but which appear to have been widely circulated in Europe and the Middle East in the medieval period. A 15th-century Yemenite version of the text was titled Maaseh Yeshu, or the "Episode of Jesus", in which Jesus is described either as being the son of Joseph or the son of Pantera. The account portrays Jesus as an impostor.
Panthera is a genus of big cats.
Jesus the Magician is a 1978 book by Morton Smith arguing that the historical Jesus was a magician who "sprang from a Galilean strain of Semitic paganism" (p. 68).
The Jesus Dynasty is a 2006 book written by James Tabor in which he develops the hypothesis that the original Jesus movement was a dynastic one, with the intention of overthrowing the rule of Herod Antipas; that Jesus of Nazareth was a royal messiah, while his cousin John the Baptist planned to be a priestly messiah.
The True Word is a lost treatise in which the ancient Greek philosopher Celsus addressed many principal points of early Christianity and argued against their validity. In The True Word, Celsus attacked Christianity in three ways: by attacking its philosophical claims, by marking it as a phenomenon associated with the uneducated and lower class, and by cautioning his audience that it was a danger to the Roman Empire. Information concerning the work exists only in the extensive quotations from it in the Contra Celsum, written some seventy years later by the Christian Origen. These are believed to be accurate as far as they go, but may not give a fully comprehensive picture of the original work.
There are several passages in the Talmud which are believed by some scholars to be references to Jesus. The name used in the Talmud is "Yeshu", the Aramaic vocalization of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
The Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus is a lost early Christian text in Greek describing the dialogue of a converted Jew, Jason, and an Alexandrian Jew, Papiscus. The text is first mentioned, critically, in the True Account of the anti-Christian writer Celsus, and therefore would have been contemporary with the surviving, and much more famous, dialogue between the convert from paganism Justin Martyr and Trypho the Jew.
Christian sources such as the New Testament books in the Christian Bible, include detailed accounts about Jesus, but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the biblical accounts of Jesus. The only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
The date of the birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources and the evidence is too incomplete to allow for consistent dating. However, most biblical scholars and ancient historians believe that his birth date is around 6 to 4 BC. Two main approaches have been used to estimate the year of the birth of Jesus: one based on the accounts in the Gospels of his birth with reference to King Herod's reign, and the other by subtracting his stated age of "about 30 years" when he began preaching.
Am 19. und 20. Oct. 1859 sind , ziemlich der über die Nahe geführten Eisenbahnbrücke gegenüber und von ihr etwa 300 Schritt entfernt (in der Nähe des Bahnhof-Gebäudes der Rhein-Nahe-Bahn), beim Abgraben des nordöstlichen Abhangs des Ruppertsberges zu Eisenbahnzwecken drei grosse römische Grabsteine von quarzartigem harten Steine ausgegraben worden, bei welchen sich die Todtenurnen, aber ohne Münzen , wie wenigstens versichert wird , befanden.On October 19th and 20th, 1859, almost opposite the railway bridge over the Nahe and about 300 paces away from it (near the station building of the Rhine-Nahe Railway), three large Roman gravestones made of quartz-like hard stone were unearthed during the excavation of the north-eastern slope of the Ruppertsberg for railway purposes. The funeral urns were found next to them, but without coins, or so it is said.