Kerry Shirts, who goes by the tag “The Backyard Professor,” has an extensive review of The Jesus Dynasty on his latest Blog. Kerry is a Christian and a Mormon, a exceptionally wide reader of books and ancient sources related to ancient Judaism and early Christianity. He has the refreshingly rare ability to profitably engage with historical materials and approaches without considering such methods of inquiry as a threat to his faith. I recommend this and other interesting posts on Kerry’s site to my readers.

I noticed this morning his Blog had already drawn one negative comment from a reader who refers to my “dubious resurrection of the Pantera legend.” This reader passes on the “solution” to the occurrence of the name Pantera as a pun on “parthenos,” (virgin), and refers Kerry Shirts to Ray Brown’s treatment of the subject in his book The Birth of the Messiah, as if that would somehow settle the question. This reader then informs us that “Pantera” is a common Roman name and asserts that the Pantera tombstone in Germany is of no more significance than one finding a tombstone today with “George” on it and concluding it was the tomb of George Washington.

I doubt if this reader has read my book, as I address this matter rather thoroughly in the chapter called “An Unknown Father of Jesus,” but beyond that, as regular readers of my Blog know, this site has become a thick archive of further research and material on the entire Pantera question, taking anyone who is truly interesting in learning and knowing the facts, far beyond these sorts of unsubstantiated assertions. I respected and knew the late Raymond Brown, and have learned much from his work, but his treatment of the Pantera subject, as is the case with many “historical Jesus” scholars, does not reflect all we now know. The Pantera/Parthenos pun idea is a recent creation and simple does not hold up to examination, and as for Pantera being a “common” name, like “George,” …well, what can I say, other than what I tell my students. Argue anything you want, but do it from a position of knowing the evidence.

Obviously the whole “Pantera” subject is a particularly sensitive issue with readers, a kind of “lightening rod” because of certain unfounded assumptions and resulting emotional reactions. Not long ago I wrote a long post trying to set the subject itself in a wider more positive context:

Joining the Slanderers

In terms of getting the facts straight on the Pantera subject itself I will highlight here some of the main Pantera materials I have put up on this site for those who are open to learning more:
Pantera as a Real Name

The Pantera Traditions

More on the German Tombstone

An Unnamed Father of Jesus

A Review Response on Pantera

One of my graduate students, Chad Day, who has been working on the Pantera materials in antiquity, recently reminded me of the treatment of the Pantera tradition by the late and great Hugh J. Schonfield, a somewhat maverick UK scholar and author of the best-selling The Passover Plot, just re-released in a special 40th anniversary edition. I had read this years ago and forgotten his reconstruction, which I think is certainly worth considering. I will paste in here Mr. Day’s summary of Schonfield’s point, taken from his work, now unfortunately out of print, titled According to the Hebrews: A New Translation of the Gospel According to the Hebrews (1937):

Schonfield (According to the Hebrews, 142-50) offers an intriguing explanation which dovetails nicely with Tabor’s discussion of Luke’s genealogy (The Jesus Dynasty, 48-56) and also avoids any alleged wrongdoing on the part of Mary. Passing over the putative philological rationalization of Pandera as an Aramaic transliteration of the Greek Panthēra, Schonfield takes Panthera as a family name, stemming from the great-grandmother of Jesus: Estha who, upon the death of Matthan (Matthew’s genealogy; or Matthat in Luke’s), married a Syrian convert to Judaism by the name of Melchi, from the family Panthera (cognomen). So, for Schonfield, this matches both the reference in Epiphanius and John of Damascus of a Barpanther. This also places Jesus in the line of Nathan. Schonfield argues that, since Jesus’ (northern Gentile) heritage would have been frowned upon, many Jewish opponents began calling him by his family name instead of Jesus the Nazarene.
Schonfield adduces two texts for support of his hypothesis:
1) b. Sanh. 106a – “…she came of rulers and princes, but she prostituted herself for carpenters” (noting the confusion over the correct generation during this Gentile blood came into Jesus’ line);
2) Teaching of Jacob (634 CE) – “…she is the daughter of David and not Theotokos, for Mary is a woman, daughter of Joakim, and her mother was Anna. Now Joakim is son of Panther, and Panther was brother of Melchi, as the tradition of us Jews in Tiberias has it, of the seed of Nathan, the son of David, of the seed of Judah.”

Here we find an explanation (albeit speculative) that undermines the Parthenos Pun without recourse to an illegitimate birth of Jesus by a certain Panthera (Roman soldier or not).

My own research on the entire Pantera tradition is leading me more and more in these directions, namely that Pantera is indeed a family name, part of the line of Mary, that traced it’s ancestry to King David, but through Nathan rather than Solomon. The fact that we now have a Jewish ossuary in Jerusalem with the name Pantera, and the earliest traditions that make Pantera a member of the family, leads me to believe that whatever else we might say of Jesus’ father, this mysterious “Pantera,” whether Roman soldier or not, he was likely part of the family. This changes rather drastically the more common “Pantera” scenario, that posits the father of Jesus as an alien figure, completely removed from the family, who somehow forced his way into the world of Jesus’ mother Miriam.

Speaking of Schonfield, although I do not agree with the main thesis of his most famous book, The Passover Plot, namely, that Jesus never actually died and was revived in the tomb after the crucifixion, his lifelong work on Christian Origins, in a dozen books, plus his truly amazing translation of the New Testament (The Authentic New Testament, also sadly out of print), I greatly value. My favorite of them all is Those Incredible Christians, but all of his works, from the 1930s on, are of incredible value. I have collected them all over the years, even in the out of print editions. There is a nice summary with many links of his work on Wikepedia.

I should also mention a personal note here. I corresponded with Hugh Schonfield in the last years of his life, in the 1970s. I was a lowly graduate student at the University of Chicago and he was the seasoned and most famous scholar, but he wrote me long handwritten letters which I treasure to this day, generously offering me research ideas and feedback on my work on Paul which became my dissertation. He had given away all of his money to charitable causes and the idea to which he was most committed was laid out in his last book, The Politics of God. Dr. Schonfield became fired with the possibilities of applying the ancient Messianic ideal of a “Servant nation” to the modern world. He formed what was called the Mondcivitan Republic, or “The Commonwealth of World Citizens,” the remnants of which now survive him in the work of Hugh and Helene Schonfield World Service Trust. I highly recommend a bit of browsing at this most interesting and cause-worthy site.

December 25th as the date of the birth of Jesus can be traced back to the early 3rd century AD though it did not achieve more universal recognition until the late 4th century. It is often asserted that “Christmas is pagan,” and that it originated because of the popularity of the Roman winter festivals of Saturnalia (Dec 16-24), and Sol Invictus, that marked the Winter Solstice (Dec 21st), or “birth of the sun.” It is ineed likely that the celebration of such winter festivals in various cultures where Christianity spread might have contributed to the seasonal popularity of December 25th, and there is no doubt that lots of “Christmas” customs (decorations, trees, Yule logs, mistletoe, gifts, parties) developed from such celebrations. However, as far as we can tell the designation of December 25th as the date of the brith of Jesus had nothing to do with pagan customs and practices. Rather it was based upon the chronological calculations of early Christians such as Julius Africanus (c. 200 AD). Africanus put the conception of Jesus around the Vernal Equinox (March 20th), which gave him his date of December 25th, nine months later, for Jesus’ birth. It is possible that the view common in some Jewish circles that Adam was created in the Spring, at the time of the Equinox, contributed to the idea that Jesus, as a “second Adam,” was incarnated on this day as well.

The New Testament gives us precious little about the chronology of the birth of Jesus. No month or season is explicitly mentioned in either Matthew’s or Luke’s birth stories. Luke does mention three things that chronologists, both ancient and modern, have used to attempt to get a more precise date. He puts the conception of John the Baptist shortly after Zechariah, his father, carried out his priestly duty in Jerusalem as part of a cycle of priests known as the “Abijah” group (Luke 1:5, 8; see 1 Chronicles 24 where these “courses” of priests are listed). He then tells us that Jesus and John are about six months apart in age (Luke 1:26), and he notes that when Jesus is baptized he is “about 30 years old” (Luke 3:23). According to Josephus each priestly section served for periods of eight days, from noon on one Sabbath to noon on the following Sabbath, twice a year, with everyone serving during the three festivals, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The cycle began on Nisan 1st, which was in the Spring, just before Passover, and the “Abijah” group was eighth in line. Scholars have worked this out in various ways and the major proposals are surveyed in Jack Finegan’s masterful study (covering this and many other chronological questions related to the Bible), A Handbook of Biblical Chronology.

My own reconstruction of the chronological framework for the birth, life, and death of Jesus, as presented in The Jesus Dynasty, puts the baptism of Jesus by John in the Fall of 26 AD, around the time he turned 30, which would also place his birthdate in the Fall (September), rather than the Winter (December). I base this also on my own best judgment of the time of the birth of John the Baptist, six months earlier (March), which in turn I relate Zechariah’s service in the Temple as part of the Abijah section that finished its duty in June of the previous year. Thus we have:

Conception of John the Baptist: late June, 6 BC

Conception of Jesus: late December, 6 BC

Birth of John the Baptist: late March, 5 BC

Birth of Jesus: late September, 5 BC

If I am correct, from a strictly historical point of view, this time of year, Christmas, turns out to be the time of the young teenaged Mary becoming pregnant, with Jesus’ birth in late September, nine months later. The source of that pregnancy is a matter of heated debate among conservative believers in a literal “virgin birth,” (Jesus had no human father), most academic scholars of early Christianity (his father was Joseph and the virgin birth story a myth), and the view current in some Jewish and Roman circles in the 2nd century AD that Jesus’ father was a man named Pantera. All of this I discuss in book and my own conclusion is that Jesus’ father remains “unknown,” to us, but that Mary and Jesus faced the scandal and gossip throughout their lives associated with the charge that his conception was out of wedlock. What I do try to argue, however, is that it is entirely possible to “believe the best” regarding the virtue and character of Mary, even in such circumstances, and that the “illegitimacy of Jesus” might actually be seen as something positive, indeed a courageous and spiritual act on her part (see my post on September 29th on this subject titled “Joining the Slanderers“).

So, as Christmas comes around again I am thinking mostly of honoring the mother of Jesus, in whose heart were kept secrets to be judged only by her and by God, including the possibility of the deep love she had for Jesus’ father, whoever he might have been, and the hard times she must have endured during the ensuing months of her pregnancy through that Winter of 6-5 BC. Given those thoughts it is hard to say “Merry Christmas,” or even “Happy Holidays,” and it is surely the case that Saturnalia type winter festivities do not seem to mix so well with such sober thoughts…I am thinking rather of “Silent Night,” but with new words more appropriate to what I think might have been the situation that December 25th.

I am convinced that the gospel of Mark is our earliest, and in some ways, our most “historical” surviving gospel. But that is not to say that Mark by any means is mainly an historical account, lacking theological interpretation. Indeed, most critical scholars have concluded that Mark is deeply theological in his orientation and that he shapes his story in ways to fit his view of things. In other words, we do not get in Mark “history as it really happened,” but theological interpretation and faith proclamation. There is a very famous and worthwhile study by James Robinson, the great scholar of early Christianity at Claremont, titled The Problem of History in Mark (1957). I think it is long ago out of print but various editions are still listed on Amazon so it is available if one searches a bit.

However, given the nature of Mark as a theologically based “faith” presentation of the “gospel of Jesus Christ the son of God” (Mark 1:1), historians must approach it with a certain caution. Indeed, for years I have been thoroughly convinced that the essential “Christology” of Mark, and that of Paul is very close. In Mark, as in Paul, Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God, who as the Suffering Servant gives his life as a ransom for many. One of Mark’s key emphases is that service, suffering, and humility are the true marks of greatness and lead to exaltation and glory. Although thoroughly apocalyptic (Mark 13), much like Paul, Mark still fundamentally interprets the Kingdom of God as a present reality realized within the faith of the community as it exhibits spiritual insights and understanding (Mark 12:28-34). He contrasts standard forms of Torah observance with the inner spiritual understanding of those who know the “secret” of the Kingdom (Mark 2:27-28; Mark 7:1-23). He supports the gospel being preached to all the nations/Gentiles (Mark 13:10), which is the Pauline mission. His understanding of the Eucharist matches that of Paul precisely. One often hears that Mark presents a more human Jesus and has a less developed, even “primitive” Christology, yet in Mark we encounter a Jesus who has authority on earth to forgive sins, calm storms, and raise the dead.

And yet, regardless of Mark’s faith based theological agenda, and its parallels to Paul’s view of the heavenly and exalted “Christ,” as Son of God and Savior, there is a strange irony at work here. I am convinced that Mark nonetheless offers us a narrative framework that in its essentials is as close to the historical Jesus as we are likely ever going to get. What most convinces me of this are the many many times, such as the examples I mentioned in my previous post, that Matthew and Luke, in rewriting/editing Mark and using him as a source, recast his basic presentation in directions that belong to later stages of their own theological developments. I find that time and time again Mark has a less elaborated and more primitive version of the story. He is the earliest of our records, and thus closer to the traditions that were being passed on within the Jesus movement. I could mention countless examples, but a few will illustrate my point here.

Mark has no birth story of Jesus and he never mentions Joseph as his father. Indeed, he calls Jesus the “son of Mary,” and mentions the four brothers by name, including the nickname “Jose.” He knows about the house of Simon at Capernaum, near the synagogue, and even mentions “Simon’s mother-in-law.” He knows that Levi (aka Matthew) is the “son of Alphaeus.” He is aware of Jesus’ reach to the region of Tyre and Sidon and records Jesus’ clandestine visit to Tyre and his secret overnight stay in a “house” there. He gives our most primitive listing of the Twelve, including “James son of Alphaeus,” and Judas whom he knows by his affectionate nickname Thaddaeus (bosom-child). He records the details of the death of John the Baptizer, and gives us good geographical indications of the last months of Jesus’ life, including the Banias scene, the “high mountain” of the “transfiguration,” and the place “beyond the Jordan.” His narrative of Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem is exceptionally packed with details that I don’t think are created for his own theological purposes. And his narrative of the discovery of the empty tomb and the recovery of “faith” in Galilee are precious alternatives to what Luke, John, and Paul present in this regard.

I have addressed the “picking and choosing” issue in other posts on this Blog but it is the case that critical scholars do carefully sift through and evaluate their sources, seeking to separate the historical from the theologically elaborated. It is not a perfect “science,” but it is a process guided by a sense of judgment and argument, open to dispute and discussion. This is in contrast to those who say, Mark is God’s Word and I believe every word of it–as well as Matthew, Luke, and John. It seems that “picking and choosing,” if done with sense and judgment, is really the only responsible way to read these or any other texts for that matter.

More to come…

Most scholars of early Christianity are convinced that Mark is our earliest surviving gospel, perhaps written as early as 65 AD, which would be 35 years after the death of Jesus in 30 AD. Matthew comes along a decade or so later and makes use of Mark as his core narrative, but adds a birth narrative (chapters 1-2) and a series of blocks of Jesus’ teachings that he inherited in the collection scholars know as Q. If you compare Mark and Matthew side by side in parallel columns it is quite easy to see how Matthew makes use of his basic narrative source Mark. He often shortens and summarizes, but just as often he explains, amplifies, and interprets. For example, where Mark cryptically refers to a prophecy about the defiling of the Jewish temple (Mark 13:14), Matthew lets his readers know that the prophecy was “spoken by the prophet Daniel” (Matt 24:15). Or when Jesus in Mark tells his disciples to “beware of the yeast of the Pharisees,” (Mark 8:15), Matthew explains that this symbol refers to their “teaching” (Matt 15:12). On the whole Matthew is relatively conservative with his source Mark. He is willing to make changes but by and large he tends to follow the story as it is told in Mark. Indeed, 90% of Mark appears in Matthew. That is why readers of the New Testament who begin with Matthew, its first book, often in coming to Mark have the distinct impression they have “read it all before.” They have–but in the revised version of Matthew who relies on Mark so heavily as a source.

Luke is quite different in that regard. Although he too uses Mark as a source, and Q as well, he very freely removes important sections of Mark, and recasts or heavily edits core stories and lines in Mark to suit his own purposes. Luke drops the listing of the names of Jesus’ brothers (Mark 6:3), the death of John the Baptist (Mark 6:17-29), the time when Jesus rebukes Peter and calls him “Satan” (Mark 8:33), Jesus’ secret trip to Tyre (Mark 7:24), the disciples failures in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-50). Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), just to name a very few random examples. Luke is a composite two volume work that includes the Acts of the Apostles (properly called Luke-Acts) and he is a great champion of the apostle Paul. He is also keen to exonerate the Romans as enemies of the Christians and to present a less politically revolutionary version of Jesus’ Kingdom of God message. For Luke, like Paul, Jesus is the risen Christ, ascended to heaven, in whose name repentance and forgiveness of sins is now preached to all the nations of the world.

The priority of Mark has many important implications. One of the most striking is the way in which he narrates the discovery of the empty tomb into which Jesus’ dead body was hastily and temporary placed the late evening on the day he was crucified. Mark’s short account is as follows:

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun was risen. And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb? And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back: for it was exceeding great. And entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he saith to them, Be not amazed: you seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who hath been crucified: he has been raised; he is not here: behold, the place where they laid him! But go, tell his disciples and Peter, he goes before you into Galilee: there shall you see him, as he said unto you. And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid (Mark 16:1-8).

It is difficult to really grasp the rather shocking impact of this stark and bare ending to Mark’s story given the extravagant and elaborated versions we get in subsequent gospel accounts. These verses end the book in our oldest and most reliable copies of Mark. In fact, this ending was considered so “inadequate” that no less than three bogus endings were composed by later scribes and editors in a desperate attempt to bring Mark more in line with a triumphant Christian faith.

Just about everything that people assume, celebrate, and remember about Easter morning is missing from Mark! There is no dramatic earthquake, no soldiers struck dumb, no epiphanies of angels, no appearances to Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the Twelve.

Mark knows of no specific appearances of the resurrected Jesus at all. What he does know is a tradition that he had reported earlier, that Jesus had told his disciples that he would “go before them to Galilee” after he was stuck but raised up (Mark 14:28). Even the word “raised” is not the ordinary word for “resurrection” in Greek, but the common verb that means lifted up, or even carried away. It is the same verb Jesus uses when he tells the paralyzed man to “take up his bed and walk” (Mark 2:9).

I do not mean to imply here that Mark thought that Jesus survived the cross and that he was carried up to Galilee by his followers. That I do not believe. For Mark, Jesus is indeed killed, and after three days he is raised up (Mark 8:31), but the nature of that resurrection Mark seems to leave open. He records no appearances of Jesus at all, though he knows the tradition that the disciples went to Galilee based on the instructions given to them and there they “saw” him, as he had told them.

The implications of this earliest tradition of Jesus’ burial and the empty tomb are enormous. Paul, in the 50s AD, reports the tradition that Jesus, after being raised from the dead on the third day, appeared to Peter, then the Twelve, then to a group of five hundred brothers at once, then to James, then to all the apostles, and finally, but much later, to him–Paul (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Both Luke and John report similar appearances of the risen Jesus to various individuals and groups on several occasions. Indeed, these sightings or appearances are considered by milliions the absolute bedrock of the Christian faith.

So how could it be that Mark knows nothing of any of this? And even Matthew, who does report that Jesus met the women who fled from the tomb, nonetheless knows of none of these specific appearances that Paul, Luke and John record taking place in Jerusalem. He tells us the disciples went to Galilee as they had been instructed and there the Eleven apostles “saw” Jesus on a mountain–but some doubted. It is clear that Matthew has little of substance to add to his basic source Mark, and that what he knows of the “resurrection” is what he expands from Mark, which makes Mark’s account even more noteworthy in terms of its fundamental significance.
The clear implication of Mark’s account of the discovery of the empty tomb and the renewed faith of the disciples in Galilee is that there is a non-Pauline version of the resurrection faith circulating within the Jesus movement that was not built upon the kinds of traditions, tales, and stories we get in Paul, Luke-Acts, and John. Indeed, even though Paul is usually dated ten or fifteen years earlier than Mark, the tradition that Mark reflects could very likely predate Paul. In other words, it is unlikely that Mark could write what he writes for a believing Christian community unless the way he report things is already grounded in the circles within which he moves. It is highly unlikely that Mark was created in a day. On the contrary, one should assume he is passing on and reflecting a way of thinking about the risen Jesus that he finds normative and common, and that Matthew, writing some years later, also passing on with very little expansion or modification. Neither of them know of any tales of appearances of the risen Jesus in Jerusalem in the days following his death. There is no indication that Mark is even aware of any alternative views or traditions. Had he known of such, and agreed with them, he surely would have passed them on. In this case I think we can say that Mark’s silence is “deafening.”

This earliest account of the Jesus story offers us resources to rethink and consider alternative possibilities when it comes to evaluating the significance of Jesus’ death and the nature of the resurrection faith among his earliest followers. Mark offers us a clear indication that Paul’s version of things was not an exclusive way of understanding Jesus and his role as a messianic suffering servant figure and crucified son of God.