Mask of a Fallen Angel

Identifying the other father of Jesus

Saint Simeon with the Christ child — Image Credit

My Father
The master [would] not have said, “My [father who is] in heaven,” if [he] did not also have another father. He would simply have said, “[My father].”

This comes from Marvin Meyer’s translation of the Gospel of Philip, a Valentinian text discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library.

The suggestion is that Jesus may have had an unacknowledged biological father.

Panthera

Celsus, a second-century Greek philosopher, wrote that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier named Panthera. We only know of this claim because Origen wrote in response:

Let us return, however, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew, where “the mother of Jesus” is described as having been “turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she had been convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera”.¹

Tiberius Pantera’s tombstone in Bad Kreuznach — Image Credit

The story is also found in the Talmud, along with numerous other insults concerning the parentage of Jesus. This was likely just anti-Christian propaganda. It is doubtful that the author of Philip had Panthera…