PASSAGES RELATING TO JESUS
39
gestion I that Stada is made up of two Latin words,
' Sta, da,' and denotes a Roman soldier, one of the
traditions being that the real father of Jesus was a
soldier.
Of the term Ben Pandira also explanations have
been suggested, which are far from being satisfactory.
Pandira (also written Pandera, or Pantira, or Pantiri)
may, as Strauss suggested
(quoted by Hitzig in
Hilgenfeld's Ztschft., as above), represent
aevOepos,
meaning son-in-law; but surely there is nothing dis-
tinctive in such an epithet to account for its being
specially applied to Jesus. The name Pandira may
also represent
irc vO-gp
(less probably
iravOijpa,
the final
a being the Aramaic article, not the Greek feminine
ending) ; but what reason there was for calling Jesus
the son of the Panther is not clear to me.' Again,
Pandira may represent
arapOevos,
and the obvious
appropriateness of a name indicating the alleged birth
of Jesus from a virgin might
make us overlook the
improbability that the form
irapOevoc
should be
hebraized into the form Pandira, when th-
Greek
word could have been reproduced almost unchanged
in a Hebrew form. It is not clear, moreover, why a
Greek word should have been chosen as an epithet
for
1 Hitzig in Hilgenfeld's " Ztschft.," 1865, p. 344 fol.
2
I know that the name ndv977p is mentioned in this connexion by
Christian writers. Origen (ap. Epiphanius, Hror.
78, cited by Wagenseil)
says, Otrot ply y&p 6
Iwo-
i3ex0b, irapaylve+w rove KAwwa.
+jv Id vibt rov-
IaK10, Jlru,X7?V 3e
ndv8pp KaAQUyAvoU.
h4p6+epot QVro,
d,rL
ro
ndv8,1po, i1r1KMnv
yevvavre .
Origen doubtless knew that the Jews called Jesus ' Ben
Pandira' ; but, as he does not explain how Jacob, the father of Joseph,
came to be called ndv9np, he does not throw any light on the meaning of the
term as applied to Jesus. And as there is no trace of any such name in the
genealogy given in the Gospels, it is at least possible that the name Ben
Pandira suggested ndv9gp, instead of being suggested by it.
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