Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/386

 382

NOTES AND QUERIES. rn s. vn. MAT 17, 1913.

and Epiphanius of Constantia include a person of this name among the immediate ancestors of Jesus.

Now some years ago there was dis- covered near Bingerbriick on the Rhine (it is preserved in the museum at Kreuznach) the tombstone of a soldier of the First Cohort of Archers named Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a native of Sidon.* The monument is, according to Prof. Deissmann, of the very earliest Im- perial period ("friiheste Kaiserzeit "). (See his article in vol. ii. p. 871 of the Orientalische Studien (Giessen, 1906). This monument, with other evidence adduced, proves (accord- ing to Prof. Deissmann, a conservative scholar) that the name Panthera was not an invention of Jewish scoffers a corruption of Trdpvos or napOevos but a widespread name among the ancients. The man's other native name Abdes is the Phoanician DJ$ HDJ7> " Servant of Isis," and has been found in- scribed on a votive tablet on the site of the Temple of Eshmun in his native city of Sidon (Makridy-Bey, ' Le Temple d'Ech- moun a Sidon,' -Rev. BibL, 1901, p. 511). The conversion of Bar Abdas into Bar Abbas can be easily accounted for on both palseo- graphic and phonetic grounds, the latter suggesting also an obvious Hebrew ety- mology. This First Cohort of Archers, in which Pantera served, was moved to the Rhine in the year 9 A.D., and may thus have been among the auxiliaries attached to the ill-fated legions of Quintilius Varus. It was the presence of a corps of archers at Aliso perhaps this very cohort that, after the defeat of the Proconsul's army, enabled the brave commandant Lucius Csedicius to hold out for a time against the victorious Germans, who had no weapons for distant fighting, and, when provisions failed, to lead back a remnant of the invading army in safety to Vetera.

As the monument of this Roman soldier is of the earliest Imperial period, we cannot date it later than the reign of Gaius. As it records the close of a life reaching back sixty-two years, we can hardly doubt that Pantera lived in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Everything, therefore, points to his having, at about the age of 22, in the year 6 B.C., when Quintilius Varus was Pro- consul, enlisted in his native province, and, having served there for a few years, been drafted with his corps to the Rhine, in 9 A.D., to see active service again under his

ORVM. I H.S.E.
 * TIB . IVL . ABDES PANTERA | SIDONIA . ANN . LXII.
 * STIPEN . XXXX . MILES EXS . | COH . I . SAGITTABI-

former commander taking part probably in the heroic defence of Aliso spending the rest of his life in frontier duty, and finding a grave at last in 34 A.D., after his forty years' service, by the river he had guarded so long. In the year 6 B.C., when we suppose him to have enlisted, Tiberius had just celebrated his second triumph, and his vic- tories had made him the idol of the legions. The brave soldier and eloquent historian,, who served under him for eight years, describes him at this time as " ducum maximus, fama fortunaque celeberrimus, et vere alterum reipublicse lumen et caput," and gives a graphic account of the enthu- siastic welcome he received some fifteen years later from the veteran troops on the Rhine, who had served under him in distant wars (Velleius, ' Hist. Rom.,' ii. 99 and 104). Hence the young recruit, when he took the oath of service with the Roman eagles, would naturally assume the prcenomen of the popular Caesar, and may have taken the added nomen in honour of the unhappy princess whom Tiberius had married some years before. Its assumption would be less probable after her disgrace and banishment in 2 B.C.

It thus seems quite within the bounds of possibility that this Sidonian archer, whose home* was but a few miles from the Galilean border, was the actual Roman soldier whom the Jews alleged to have been the father of Jesus. Perhaps, indeed, the allegation was not originally made in the offensive form in which it has come down to us ; but the Church tradition would inevitably reject and bury in oblivion an imputation of heathen paternity. *,

The scene at Alexandria described by Philo (' In Flacc.,' 6) when the Jew-baiting mob, in order to insult the newly crowned Herod Agrippa, paraded through the streets as a mock king a poor imbecile wretch named Karabas (which probably should be read Bar Abbas or Bar Abdas), certainly presents itself as a repetition of the mockery of Jesus by the soldiers of Pilate and Antipas. The name may well have been borrowed with the character, Some two years only separate this Alexandrian tumult from the dismissal of Pilate from the Procuratorship,. and of Caiaphas from the high- priesthood (A.D. 36) ; and, Gospel chronology being most uncertain, the trial of Jesus may not have taken place until quite late in the Roman governor's term of office. When we consider the close intercourse which existed

with which Varus suppressed the rising in Galilee and Judea (Jos., 'Arch.,' xlvi. 10. 9.).
 * His corps may have formed part of the force