Was Jesus Conceived out of Wedlock by Mary and a Jewish Relative, Pantera? Part III Guest Post by James Tabor
We come now to the third part of James Tabor's guest post thread on the biological father of Jesus, where he proposes a controversial solution that will surely spark some reactions! Are you convinced? Inclined to be convinced? Not at all convinced? Let us know what you think! Again, these posts are tied to James's forthcoming book The Lost Mary: How the Jewish Mother of Jesus Became the Virgin Mother of God (Knopf). ****************************** Part III These earliest references to Pantera stand in the sharpest contrast to several dozen much later references in rabbinic literature that slanderously charged that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a man named Pantera, with whom his mother had committed adultery.[1] And it was this story that then got passed on beyond Jewish circles—including to the philosopher Celsus, who identifies it as a tale passed on by Jews. Several early Christian writers, responding to these charges that Jesus was the adulterous “son of Pantera,” a Roman soldier, counter with the explanation that the name Pantera was an ancestral name in Jesus’ [...]