Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera
Encyclopedia
Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40
) was a Roman
solder whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück
, Germany
in 1859.
Historically, the name Pantera is not an unusual name and had been in use among Roman soldiers in the second century.
A historical connection from this soldier to Jesus of Nazareth has been hypothesized, based on the claim of the ancient Roman philosopher Celsus
that Jesus's real father was a Roman soldier named Pantera. Tiberius Pantera could have been serving in the region at the time of Jesus's conception. The hypothesis is considered extremely unlikely by scholars, given that there is no evidence to support it.
Germany, tombstones for nine Roman soldiers were accidentally discovered. One of the tombstones was that of Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera and is presently kept in the Römerhalle museum in Bad Kreuznach
, Germany.
The inscription (CIL
XIII 7514) on the tombstone of Abdes Pantera reads:
, although it appears in Latin
in the inscription. It was perhaps his last name, and means panther
. The names Tiberius Iulius are acquired names and were probably given to him as a former slave when in recognition of serving in the Roman army
he obtained Roman citizenship
. The name Abdes means "servant of God" and suggests that Pantera had a semitic
or even Jewish background. Pantera was from Sidonia, which is identified with Sidon
in Phoenicia
, and joined the Cohors I Sagittariorum (first cohort of archers).
Pantera is not an unusual name, and its use goes back at least to the second century.. 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, but in 1891 French archeologist 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 specially common among Roman soldiers.
At that time Roman army enlistments were for 25 years and Pantera served 40 years in the army until his death at 62. The reign of emperor Tiberius
was between 14 and 37 and the Cohors I Sagittariorum was stationed in Judaea
and then in Bingen
. Pantera was probably the standard bearer (signifer
) of his cohort.
, a pagan anti-Christian Greek philosopher
wrote that Jesus's father was a Roman soldier named Pantera. The views of Celsus drew responses from Origen
who considered it a fabricated story. Raymond E. Brown
states that the story of Pantera is a fanciful explanation of the birth of Jesus which includes very little historical evidence.
Celsus' wide ranging criticism of Christianity included the assertions that Christians had forsaken the laws of their fathers, that their minds had been held captive by Jesus and that the teachings of Jesus included nothing new and were simply a repetition of the sayings of the Greek philosophers. 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 "Panther" and the word "Parthenos" meaning virgin
.
, which dates to the Middle Ages
and appeared in Aramaic as well as Hebrew as an anti-Christian satirical chronicle of Jesus also refers to the name Pantera, or Pandera. The book accuses Jesus of illegitimate birth
as the son of Pandera, and of heretic and at times violent activities along with his followers during his ministry.
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 can not be traced with any certainty, and given that it is unlikely to go before the 4th century, it is far too late to include authentic remembrances of Jesus. The nature of the Toledot Yeshu as a parody of the Christian gospels is manifested by the claim that 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.
Bruce Chilton
and Craig A. Evans
state that the Toledot Yeshu consists primarily of fictitious anti-Christian stories based on the ongoing friction with the Jews, and that it offers no value to historical research on Jesus. The Blackwell Companion to Jesus states that the Toledot Yeshu has no historical facts as such, and was perhaps created as a tool for warding off conversions to Christianity.
Maurice Casey
rejects Tabor's hypothesis on multiple grounds and states that Tabor has presented no evidence regarding the equality of the two. James Whitehead and Michael Burns state that the chances that Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera is the same soldier as that suggested by Celsus seem infinitesimal.
40
Year 40 was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Augustus without colleague...
) was a Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
solder whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück
Bingerbrück
Bingerbrück is a Stadtteil of Bingen am Rhein, on the opposite side of the river Nahe from the old town of Bingen. It was self-administering until 1969.- Binger Mäuseturm :...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1859.
Historically, the name Pantera is not an unusual name and had been in use among Roman soldiers in the second century.
A historical connection from this soldier to Jesus of Nazareth has been hypothesized, based on the claim of the ancient Roman philosopher Celsus
Celsus
Celsus was a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Early Christianity. He is known for his literary work, The True Word , written about by Origen. This work, c. 177 is the earliest known comprehensive attack on Christianity.According to Origen, Celsus was the author of an...
that Jesus's real father was a Roman soldier named Pantera. Tiberius Pantera could have been serving in the region at the time of Jesus's conception. The hypothesis is considered extremely unlikely by scholars, given that there is no evidence to support it.
The 19th century discovery
In October 1859, during the construction of a railroad in BingerbrückBingerbrück
Bingerbrück is a Stadtteil of Bingen am Rhein, on the opposite side of the river Nahe from the old town of Bingen. It was self-administering until 1969.- Binger Mäuseturm :...
Germany, tombstones for nine Roman soldiers were accidentally discovered. One of the tombstones was that of Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera and is presently kept in the Römerhalle museum in Bad Kreuznach
Bad Kreuznach
Bad Kreuznach is the capital of the district of Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is located on the Nahe river, a tributary of the Rhine...
, Germany.
The inscription (CIL
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history...
XIII 7514) on the tombstone of Abdes Pantera reads:
|
|
Analysis of the inscription
The name Pantera is GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, although it appears in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
in the inscription. It was perhaps his last name, and means panther
Panthera
Panthera is a genus of the family Felidae , which contains four well-known living species: the tiger, the lion, the jaguar, and the leopard. The genus comprises about half of the Pantherinae subfamily, the big cats...
. The names Tiberius Iulius are acquired names and were probably given to him as a former slave when in recognition of serving in the Roman army
Roman army
The Roman army is the generic term for the terrestrial armed forces deployed by the kingdom of Rome , the Roman Republic , the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine empire...
he obtained Roman citizenship
Roman citizenship
Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged political and legal status afforded to certain free-born individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance....
. The name Abdes means "servant of God" and suggests that Pantera had a semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
or even Jewish background. Pantera was from Sidonia, which is identified with Sidon
Sidon
Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 km north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital Beirut. In Genesis, Sidon is the son of Canaan the grandson of Noah...
in Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
, and joined the Cohors I Sagittariorum (first cohort of archers).
Pantera is not an unusual name, and its use goes back at least to the second century.. 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, but in 1891 French archeologist C. S. Clermont-Ganneau
Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau
Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau was a noted French Orientalist and archaeologist.-Biography:Clermont-Ganneau was born in Paris, son of a sculptor of some repute...
showed that it was a name that was in use in Iudaea by other people and Adolf Deissmann
Gustav Adolf Deissmann
Gustav Adolf Deissmann was a German Protestant theologian, best known for his leading work on the Greek language used in the New Testament, which he showed was the koine, or commonly used tongue of the Hellenistic world of that time.-Life:Deissmann was professor of theology at the Ruprecht Karl...
later showed with certainty that it was a common name at the time, and that it was specially common among Roman soldiers.
At that time Roman army enlistments were for 25 years and Pantera served 40 years in the army until his death at 62. The reign of emperor Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
was between 14 and 37 and the Cohors I Sagittariorum was stationed in Judaea
Judaea (Roman province)
Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...
and then in Bingen
Bingen am Rhein
Bingen am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.The settlement’s original name was Bingium, a Celtic word that may have meant “hole in the rock”, a description of the shoal behind the Mäuseturm, known as the Binger Loch. Bingen was the starting point for the...
. Pantera was probably the standard bearer (signifer
Signifer
A signifer was a standard bearer of the Roman legions. He carried a signum for a cohort or century. Each century had a signifer and within each cohort the first century's signifer would be the senior....
) of his cohort.
2nd century usage by Celsus
In the 2nd century, CelsusCelsus
Celsus was a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Early Christianity. He is known for his literary work, The True Word , written about by Origen. This work, c. 177 is the earliest known comprehensive attack on Christianity.According to Origen, Celsus was the author of an...
, a pagan anti-Christian Greek philosopher
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...
wrote that Jesus's father was a Roman soldier named Pantera. The views of Celsus drew responses from Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
who considered it a fabricated story. Raymond E. Brown
Raymond E. Brown
The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...
states that the story of Pantera is a fanciful explanation of the birth of Jesus which includes very little historical evidence.
Celsus' wide ranging criticism of Christianity included the assertions that Christians had forsaken the laws of their fathers, that their minds had been held captive by Jesus and that the teachings of Jesus included nothing new and were simply a repetition of the sayings of the Greek philosophers. Marcus J. Borg
Marcus Borg
Marcus J. Borg is an American Biblical scholar and author. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, holds a DPhil degree from Oxford University and is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, an endowed chair, at Oregon State University, from which he retired in 2007...
and John Dominic Crossan
John Dominic Crossan
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American religious scholar and former Catholic priest known for co-founding the Jesus Seminar. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology, anthropology and New Testament textual and higher criticism. He is also a lecturer who has appeared in...
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
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
around the time of Jesus' birth. The "common legionary name" Panthera could have arisen from a satirical connection between "Panther" and the word "Parthenos" meaning virgin
Virginity
Virginity refers to the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions which place special value and significance on this state, especially in the case of unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth...
.
Jewish usage in the Middle Ages
The book Toledot YeshuToledot Yeshu
Sefer Toledot Yeshu is a medieval version of the story of Jesus from a Jewish perspective. The book concerns Yeshu, son of Joseph and Mary, born in Bethlehem, but also makes this Yeshu a contemporary of Queen Salome Alexandra...
, which dates to the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and appeared in Aramaic as well as Hebrew as an anti-Christian satirical chronicle of Jesus also refers to the name Pantera, or Pandera. The book accuses Jesus of illegitimate birth
Legitimacy (law)
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...
as the son of Pandera, and of heretic and at times violent activities along with his followers during his ministry.
Throughout the centuries, both Christian and Jewish scholars have generally only paid minor attention to the Toledot Yeshu. Robert E. Van Voorst
Robert E. Van Voorst
Robert E. Van Voorst is a Professor of New Testament Studies at Western Theological Seminary, in Holland, Michigan, and has published scholarly works in early Christian writings and New Testament Greek. He received his B.A. in Religion from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, his M.Div. from...
states that the literary origins of Toledot Yeshu can not be traced with any certainty, and given that it is unlikely to go before the 4th century, it is far too late to include authentic remembrances of Jesus. The nature of the Toledot Yeshu as a parody of the Christian gospels is manifested by the claim that Apostle Peter pretended to be Christian so he could separate them from the Jews and its portrayal of Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...
as a hero who posed as a disciple of Jesus in order to stop the Christians.
Bruce Chilton
Bruce Chilton
Bruce Chilton is a scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, now Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, and formerly Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale University. He holds a degree in New Testament from Cambridge University...
and Craig A. Evans
Craig A. Evans
Craig Alan Evans is a biblical scholar and author.He earned his Bachelor of Arts in history and philosophy from Claremont McKenna College, a Master of Divinity from Western Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon, and his Master of Arts and Ph.D...
state that the Toledot Yeshu consists primarily of fictitious anti-Christian stories based on the ongoing friction with the Jews, and that it offers no value to historical research on Jesus. The Blackwell Companion to Jesus states that the Toledot Yeshu has no historical facts as such, and was perhaps created as a tool for warding off conversions to Christianity.
Hypothesis about a Jesus connection
A possible connection between the two Panteras has been hypothesized by James Tabor, and hinges on the assumption that Celsus' information about Jesus' illegitimacy was correct, and a soldier with this name, living at the right period, might be the father. Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera's career would place him in Judea (present day Israel) as a young man around the time of Jesus' conception, and Tabor has hypothesized that as a connection.Maurice Casey
Maurice Casey
Maurice Casey is British scholar of New Testament and early Christianity. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham, having served there as Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the Department of Theology....
rejects Tabor's hypothesis on multiple grounds and states that Tabor has presented no evidence regarding the equality of the two. James Whitehead and Michael Burns state that the chances that Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera is the same soldier as that suggested by Celsus seem infinitesimal.