© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/17455197-01802001 journal for the study of the historical jesus 18 (2020) 141-155 brill.com/jshj Jesus ‘ben Pantera’: An Epigraphic and Military- Historical Note Christopher B. Zeichmann Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada christopher.zeichman@utoronto.ca Abstract There is ample evidence that anti-Christian polemicists asserted that Jesus’ true father was neither God nor Joseph, but a Roman soldier named Pantera. This was long dis- missed as ahistorical, but for the past century, some interlocutors have argued that there may be credibility to the polemic, with some going so far as to identify Pantera with a certain Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a Roman archer. The present article ad- dresses various misconceptions of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera by those both assert- ing his parentage of Jesus and those arguing against it. The article concludes that the possibility that the soldier under question was Jesus’ father is remote. Keywords Pantera – Jesus’ birth – Roman army – epigraphy 1 Introduction The slur that Jesus was conceived illegitimately is found in some of the earliest surviving anti-Christian polemic.1 Jewish texts describe Jesus’ extra-marital conception in numerous ways, most famously in the Toledot Yeshu. 1 See the discussions in, e.g., Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (abrl; New York: Doubleday, updated edn, 1993), pp. 534–42.