Jesus, the Son of Panthera: The Christian Invention of a “Jewish” Slander

The Panthera legend is often treated as an early Jewish slander against Jesus and Mary, but the evidence points instead to a Christian anti-Jewish construction. Early Christian writers placed the accusation in the mouths of fictional or stylized Jewish opponents to defend the virginal conception, police Christian belief, and portray Jews as hostile outsiders. Rabbinic references to the “son of Panthera” are late, fragmentary, and too ambiguous to support the idea of an organized Jewish anti-Christian polemic.

See also The Panthera Legend and the Conception of Jesus: Rape, Consent and Anti-Judaism (Routledge, 2026).

By Christopher B. Zeichmann
Toronto Metropolitan University
Religious Studies
June 2026

            There is an ancient rumor that Jesus’ father wasn’t God in heaven nor was he conceived by the Holy Spirit. His real father wasn’t even Joseph – the man who adopted and helped raise the young Messiah. Rather, a man named Panthera had sexual intercourse with Mary and was Jesus’ father according to the flesh.

            Only a few decades after the Gospels were written, the pagan philosopher Celsus reported this rumor in his anti-Christian book titled The True Word (180 CE).[1] Although the earliest known articulation of the story came from the pen of a pagan, the story quickly came to be associated with Jewish detractors of Christianity. The Church historian Eusebius (265–339 CE) claimed this tale was popular among Jews, who espoused this legend to delegitimize the nascent Christian religion.[2] Eusebius’ claim finds support in the Tosefta (third century CE), Jerusalem Talmud (fifth century CE), and the Babylonian Talmud (sixth century CE), Jewish texts which are peppered with references to the son of Panthera.[3] And then there is the famous Jewish work of anti-Christian polemic known as the Toledot Yeshu (the dating of which is complex), a satirical “biography” of Jesus that purports he was a charlatan born of an affair between Mary and Panthera. Of course, Christian writers tried to reassure their readers that such rumors were entirely false.

          What is striking is how consistently this rumor is placed in the mouth of ancient Jews. The oldest known articulation of this legend, found in Origen’s quotations of Celsus’ True Word, attributes the following to a fictional Jewish man:

          When [Mary] was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera.[4]

          Origen dismissed Celsus’ story, but he was not the only Christian to address the rumor that Jesus was conceived by a human father. Several other writers tried to curtail these rumors, but not all of them mention Panthera. We find such accounts in texts ranging from apocryphal gospels to theological treatises. To mention just a few examples: 1) The Protevangelium of James – an infancy gospel that harmonizes and builds upon the canonical infancy narratives and was written around 180 CE – depicts numerous characters expressing doubt about Mary’s virginity. Mary, naturally, is vindicated by a test performed by Salome (Mary’s midwife), who inserts her finger into Mary’s vagina to determine if her hymen is still intact. Salome’s hand then erupts into flames for submitting Mary to this examination, both on account of her doubt as well as the supernatural forces within Mary’s womb.[5] 2) The Syriac Transitus Mariae (fourth century CE) depicts similar skepticism. After crucifying Jesus, some Jews tell Mary that even though she insists Jesus was the son of God, “we call him a man; knowing whose son he is, and how he was born.”[6] They insinuate that Jesus was not born by a miracle, but a mundane act of human sexual intercourse, presumably illegitimately. 3) The Acts of Pilate, another fourth-century text, elaborates upon the trial scene from the Gospels, and places the following accusation into the mouth of Jesus’ priestly opponents: “you were born of fornication.”[7] This accusation then prompts a discussion between Jesus, the Jewish elders, and Pontius Pilate on the matter of Jesus’ conception. In the end, these malicious accusations fail to persuade Pilate.

          Conspicuously, these texts all depict Mary’s accusers as Jewish: the priests in the Acts of Pilate, the doubters in both the Protevangelium of James and the Syriac Transitus Mariae, and we might also recall here Celsus’ Jewish interlocutor. Still other Christian writers allege that Jews devised and perpetuated this rumor: Eusebius (265–339 CE) derides “those of circumcision who … claim that our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was born of Panthera.”[8] Around 846 CE, Amulo – bishop of Lyon – wrote a book to King Charles the Bald about how much Jews hate Christians, hoping his letter might convince the king to institute anti-Jewish laws. Amulo laid out his case for Jewish treachery, asserting, among other things, that Jews claim that Jesus is “the son of an impious man; that is, of some pagan – whom they name Panthera – with whom they say the mother of the Lord committed adultery.”[9] Ancient Christians were preoccupied with the idea that Jews slandered Mary as a prostitute or adulteress. Examples are numerous and do not always invoke Panthera.

          To be sure, some Jewish texts of Late Antiquity do allege that a man named Panthera had a son named Yeshu. Although the Mishnah never mentions this rumor, it can be found in the Tosefta (third century CE), Jerusalem Talmud (circa 400 CE), and Qohelet Rabbah (sixth–seventh century CE). The Babylonian Talmud (sixth century CE) also mentions “the son of Panthera,” but does not assign him the name “Yeshu.” Jewish sources discussing the son of Panthera did so in anecdotal ways, mentioning specific instances when rabbis living well after the time of Jesus had something to say about this figure. These anecdotes typically served to illustrate a halakhic issue, whether by demonstrating the appropriate behavior in a given situation, or prompting debate about halakhic principles at play in the incident. It would be a mistake to suppose that these either were, or were intended to be, works of history; instead, they often deploy minor figures as convenient foils for the authors to illustrate the proper way of doing things. Let us briefly consider the evidence from Jewish literature in chronological order.

          First, the Tosefta (a compilation of halakhic discussions) and Qohelet Rabbah (a midrashic commentary on the biblical book of Ecclesiastes) relate a tradition about a heretic named Yaakov, who encounters a fellow Jew who happened to have been bitten by a snake. In an effort to heal this man, Yaakov invokes the name of Yeshu son of Panthera. Rabbi Ishmael prohibited the healing as pagan magic, leading the bitten man to die. If “Yeshu son of Panthera” refers to the Christian Jesus, then he appears to represent something heretical and idolatrous. The lesson is that it is better to perish than to save one’s life through idolatrous sorcery.[10] The story seems to take place in the early second century CE.

          Second, the Jerusalem Talmud (another compilation of halakhic discussions) narrates a scene where the grandson of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, a third century rabbi, was choking.[11] When a passerby whispered the name “Yeshu son of Panthera” in the boy’s ear, he was able to breathe again. The name seems to be part of a magical incantation, illicit in nature – much like Yaakov’s invocation in the Tosefta and Qohelet Rabbah. The sages once again condemn the passerby’s action, saying it would have been better for Rabbi Joshua’s grandson to die than to find health through blasphemous words.

          More extensive is a short discussion found in the Babylonian Talmud, wherein the rabbinic sages debate the identity of a tattooed sorcerer who was the son of a man named Stada.

          The Gemara [i.e., the record of discussion by rabbis of 200–500 CE] asks: Why did they call him ben Stada, when he was the son of Panthera? Rav Ḥisda said: His mother’s husband, who acted as his father, was named Stada, but the one who had relations with his mother and fathered him was named Panthera. The Gemara asks: Wasn’t his mother’s husband Pappos ben Yehuda? Rather, his mother was named Stada and he was named ben Stada after her. The Gemara asks: But wasn’t his mother Miriam, who braided women’s hair? The Gemara explains: That is not a contradiction. Rather, Stada was merely a nickname, as they say in Pumbedita: This one strayed [setat da] from her husband.[12]

         The exchange concerns the resolution of contradictory traditions about the parentage of this sorcerer: is he the son of Stada or the son of Panthera? Rav Hisda asserts that both traditions are true: his adoptive father was Stada, his biological father was Panthera, and his mother was named Miriam. Rabbis at another Babylonian school (Pumbedita) suggest a different family tree: Panthera fathered the child, Pappos raised the child (a man whose wife was famously adulterous: e.g., b. Git. 90a; t. Sotah 5:9), and Stada was the mother’s nickname. There are two rival explanations about the parentage of a man of many names (i.e., the son of Panthera, ben Stada, and the son of Pappos), but as Peter Schäfer observes, both explanations agree that the mother was an adulteress and that the father was Panthera. They only disagree about the name of her husband (Pappos vs. Stada) and of the woman herself (Miriam vs. Stada).[13]

         With all that said, there are two major flaws with the prevailing opinion that the Panthera legend was the product of Jewish slander and largely perpetuated by Jews. First, Christian texts claiming that real, historical Jews were the primary articulators of the Panthera legend are deeply unreliable. Second, it is not clear that the earliest Jewish references to “Yeshu son of Panthera” refer to the Christian figure of Jesus. Let us consider these issues in turn.

            Although several early Christian writers attribute the Panthera legend to Jewish slander, these are best understood as fictions designed to discredit Judaism and to compel Christians to accept the doctrine of virginal conception. Let us consider the earliest instance of this rumor: the Jewish man quoted by Celsus. Origen published his response to Celsus several decades after the pagan philosopher had died and Celsus’ works have not survived. In short, we can only hypothesize what Celsus actually wrote. After all, we are dealing with an elaborate game of telephone: we only know about this particular accusation because Origen (supposedly accurately) quotes Celsus, who in turn (supposedly) quotes a fictional character, who (supposedly) articulates a widespread rumor. Between issues of genre-conventions (of both Origen’s Christian apologetics and Celsus’ dialogical polemics) and the sheer number of steps Origen’s account is removed from its ostensible source, this is not exactly the type of testimony that we should treat as a historically reliable source.[14] The same could be said about Christian depictions of Jewish doubters of Mary’s virginity in the Protevangelium of James, Syriac Transitus Mariae, and the Acts of Pilate, which are all works of fiction written to both entertain and edify. These were all works of ancient fiction, which freely invented “sock puppets” to espouse the views they wanted to ridicule or commend, inventing implausible scenes for their own purposes. There is no reason to suppose that authors are depicting, or were even trying to depict, realistic scenes for a general audience. Rather, Christian discussions of Panthera were intended to draw lines between “persecuted insider” and “abusive outsider,” wherein Jewish attacks on Jesus’ parentage were constructed as “evidence” of invented oppression of Christians by invented Jews.

            One might object to this first argument by pointing to the rabbinic evidence noted above, wherein Yeshu son of Panthera is a recurring character. But this fails to persuade. At most, the Talmudic son of Panthera/Stada/Pappos has but a few (mostly sketchy) parallels with Jesus: 1) a mother named Mary/Miriam (albeit only within Rav Hisda’s tradition); 2) the later invocation of his name by people whom the sages regarded as heretics; 3) some questions about his biological vs. adoptive father. One could also draw attention to the name Yeshu/Jesus, which was common in Roman antiquity, but not attributed to this figure in the Babylonian Talmud. In all other respects, the Christian Jesus and the Talmudic son of Panthera hold no more in common than any other “heretics” depicted in rabbinic literature.

          These three points where the son of Panthera resembles the Christian Jesus only come about in the Babylonian Talmud itself. That is, the Talmud draws upon earlier traditions of three distinct men: the son of Stada, a son of Pappos, and the son of Panthera. The sages of the Talmud presume that these names refer to one and the same person, seeking to resolve the question of his parentage.[15] When we turn to prior traditions about these three men, treating them in isolation from one another – and apart from their conflation in this particular debate – a complete disconnect from the Christian Jesus becomes obvious.[16]

• There is no real question about the father of ben Stada in prior tradition: it is some otherwise unknown man named Stada. The Talmuds and Tosefta describe ben Stada as an Egyptian Jew who was covered with tattoos that he used for rituals of witchcraft (t. Shab. 11:15; y. Shab. 12:4, 13d; b. Shab. 104b). Ben Stada either died by hanging in the city of Lod shortly before Passover (b. Sanh. 67a) or he was stoned to death (t. Sanh. 10:11; y. Yev. 16:6, 15d). Perhaps most noteworthy, though, is that ben Stada’s birthname is never actually mentioned. There is no indication that his name was “Yeshu,” even in the debate recorded in the Babylonian Talmud that the text itself seeks to resolve! Moreover, it is not at all clear when this son of Stada lived – Rabbi Eliezer (late first and early second century CE) seems to be the earliest sage aware of him.[17]
• Pappos is never said to have had a son at all, let alone one named Yeshu. Pappos’ wife was infamous for her sexual promiscuity (b. Git. 90a), so it is possible that Pappos raised children that she bore; but none of these children are ever discussed, let alone depicted as heretics. Moreover, the Babylonian Talmud indicates that Pappos died in the year 134 CE (b. Ber. 61b), making it impossible to identify him with the father of Jesus.[18]
• The son of Panthera never actually “appears” in the Tosefta or Talmuds; he is no more than a name invoked in the context of illegitimate healing (t. Chul. 2:22–24; y. Shab. 14:4, 14d; y. Avod. Zar. 2:2, 40d–41a; cf. Qoh. Rab. 1:8). When he might have lived is unclear. Indeed, it is not even obvious that the sages regarded the son of Panthera as a human being, except in the context of the debate recorded in the Babylonian Talmud. There is reason to think “the son of Panthera” is not even this figure’s real name: every other discussion of the figure implies that “son of Panthera” is a euphemism written to avoid the man’s true and powerful name – a name that rabbinic sages agreed should never even be whispered.[19] Though this figure’s identity is murky, it is certainly conceivable that this was the rabbis’ way of referring to the Christ whom Christians invoked in their own prayers. That is to say, it is not the historical Jesus, but the heavenly figure whom Christians worshipped.

These figures hold little in common with one another, aside from Jewishness, generally negative reputations, and their conception by two regular human beings. Given the thinness of the similarities and their incidental convergence in the Babylonian Talmud, we might disagree with Peter Schäfer’s contention that the Talmud offers “a highly ambitious and devastating counternarrative to the infant story of the New Testament.”[20] Rather, it is more likely that three men (i.e., ben Stada, Pappos’ son, the son of Panthera) were mentioned incidentally by earlier rabbis, but later prompted elaboration such that they were conflated into a single man with no real connection to Jesus. Isaiah Gafni and Stephen G. Wald thus observe that this conflated son of Stada/Pappos/Panthera is “almost certainly a classic example of the Babylonian Talmud’s ‘creative historiography’ which seeks to identify obscure and unknown figures with significant and well known figures.”[21] Although rabbinic literature depicts debates between real historical people, it is neither a work of historiography nor is it always reliable in its depiction of these debates.

            But how many early Christians read these passages from the Tosefta, Qohelet Rabbah, and the Talmuds? The answer is “none at all.”[22] It is not until Agobard the bishop of Lyon in the ninth century CE that we find Christian writers indicating any firsthand familiarity with the Talmud. Christians show zero knowledge about the contents of rabbinic literature, so it is not as though Christians were carefully reading the Talmud and finding its (vague-with-regards-to-Panthera) contents offensive. Instead, Christians were either speculating about or, more probably, concocting stories about the tales of Panthera that allegedly lurked within Jewish literature for their own ideological purposes and on their own recognizance.

             This might lead us to reconsider the common supposition that Jewish texts denigrated Mary as a way of attacking the foundations of Christianity, diminishing Jesus’ honor by attacking that of his mother, such that depicting her as an adulteress or prostitute enacts gendered norms around masculine honor and feminine shame. In fact, no Jewish text from the first millennium CE ever states any such thing. The Babylonian Talmud may insinuate that Mary was an adulteress who consented to sex with Panthera (b. Shab. 104b; b. Sanh. 67a). But this is only because the Babylonian Talmud conflates three distinct men. Indeed, as I argue in my book, even the much later and highly polemical tradition known as the Toledot Yeshu rarely depicts Mary as an adulteress. Jewish texts of the first millennium CE show little interest in her sex life and even after the turn of the millennium, Jewish literature still depicts Mary as a respectable woman, one whom Panthera raped. Rather, it is more likely that proto-Orthodox Christians inserted this polemic into the mouths of fictional Jews, so as to address and condemn Christian theologies that did not insist upon Jesus’ virginal conception.[23]