Jesus in the Talmud

98 Chapter 9born from a virgin betrothed to a descendant of the house of David.Against the New Testament story (with its inherent inconsistency between“husband” and “betrothed”) the Talmud concocts its drastic counternarrativeof the adulteress and her bastard son (presumably from a Romansoldier), demonstrating the complete absurdity of any Davidic (and henceMessianic) claim. As a bastard, Jesus belongs to the community of Israelonly in a limited sense. One of the restrictions of his status implies that hecannot enter a legitimate marriage with a Jewish woman and father Jewishchildren—let alone found a congregation that claims to be the “newIsrael.”This scathing attack on the Christian claim of parthenogenesis maywell explain the use of the strange name Panthera/Pantera/Pandera/Pantiriin most of its variations 6 for Miriam’s lover and Jesus’ real father (in Greekas well as in rabbinic sources). The last derivation among all the possibilitiesthat Maier discusses, and that he finds “captivating at first glance” butnevertheless dismisses, 7 is the assumption of an intentional distortion ofparthenos (“virgin”) to pantheros (“panther”). This explanation, first suggestedby F. Nitzsch 8 and followed by quite a number of scholars, 9 is indeedmore plausible than the derivation from porneia (“fornication”)which is philologically difficult (Panthera/Pandera as a corruption ofpornos/pornē/porneia?). 10 In fact, it is the perfect deliberate distortion of theword parthenos since it is a reverse reading of the letters “r,” “th,” and “n”:pantheros. So Boyarin is absolutely right in arguing that what we encounterhere is the well-known rabbinic practice of mocking pagan orChristian holy names by changing them pejoratively, 11 such as penei elah(“face of god”) that becomes penei kelev (“face of the dog”). 12 But thepunch line in our case is the reverse reading of the consonants within theGreek word—not by coincidence following the magical(!) practice of readinga word backwards (le-mafrea< ): by changing parthenos to pantheros, therabbis do not just practice a case of “cacophemism”; 13 rather, they utter amagical spell, or an exorcism, and “transform” Jesus’ birth from a virgin tothat of a common Roman soldier named Panther. Maier’s major argumentagainst this derivation (who could understand such a sophisticated pun?) 14grossly underestimates the rabbis and their readers. All that we know fromrabbinic as well as from pagan sources points to the fact that the unkindcountermessage to the New Testament—Miriam/Mary was a whore and