Alma vs. Pantera: Jewish Responses to the Virgin Birth

*This is a Chapter in my new book "Pilgrimage to Shiloh," available soon.

"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel." — Isaiah 7:14

The virgin birth is a central article of faith in Christianity. It serves as a key feature of introduction to Jesus Christ in the gospels, both as supernatural endorsement of His life and ministry, and was also perceived universally as a fulfillment of prophecy in the early Christian community. Given its central place in the Christian story, it has been attacked frequently, and therefore, for a believer, it must be defended.

Two significant Jewish polemics have been raised against the Christian claim of Jesus’ virgin birth. The first argues that the Hebrew word Alma in Isaiah 7:14, often translated as "virgin," actually means "young woman," undermining the Christian interpretation of the verse as a prophecy of the virgin birth.¹ The second, older polemic claims that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Pantera, not the result of a miraculous conception.² These arguments, when taken together, reveal a contradiction that weakens both positions.

The Alma Argument

The claim that Alma does not mean "virgin" but merely "young woman" is central to Jewish critiques of Christian reliance on Isaiah 7:14. This interpretation suggests that Christians misunderstood the prophecy due to their dependence on the Greek Septuagint, which translated Alma as specifically parthenos ("virgin"). However, it is critical to note that this translation was made by Jewish scholars long before the time of Christ, as part of the Septuagint project in the 3rd century BCE.³

The choice of parthenos, a word unambiguously meaning "virgin," reflects how Jewish translators of that era understood Alma. The translation choice of parthenos in the Septuagint represents a significant interpretive decision by the Jewish translators.

Furthermore, this understanding of Alma as implying virginity is supported by its usage in other Hebrew biblical texts.

Supporting this original translation is the Aramaic/Syriac translation of the Old Testament called the Peshitta, which began its translation before Christ. The Peshitta here uses the Syriac word "btultā", which unequivocally means "virgin." This is a second translation that supports the specifically virginal rendering and aligns perfectly with the Christian understanding of this verse.

If they had understood Alma simply to mean "young woman," they could have easily chosen the Greek word for "young woman" (neanis) instead of parthenos, which specifically denotes virginity. This suggests that their choice of parthenos was not accidental, but reflective of how they understood and interpreted the term.

Additionally, the language of ‘behold’ and ‘the Lord himself will give you a sign’ suggests something remarkable. A ‘young woman’ having a baby is nothing unusual, which would make it a rather unimpressive sign. However, a virgin conceiving and bearing a son would indeed be extraordinary. This gives a significant point of reference for how it ought to be translated, even if one is deciding neutrally between the two.

Only after the rise of Christianity did Jewish interpreters begin to reject the Septuagint’s reading of Isaiah 7:14, likely in response to the Christian use of the text to argue for Jesus’ divine birth.

This post-Christian revisionism seriously undermines the credibility of the Alma argument, as it reflects a change in interpretation motivated by polemical concerns rather than linguistic or textual evidence.

The Pantera Argument

The second polemic, recorded as early as the writings of the pagan philosopher Celsus in the 2nd century, asserts that Jesus was not miraculously conceived but was the illegitimate child of Mary and a Roman soldier named Pantera. This argument, which also appears in later Jewish texts such as the Toledot Yeshu, aims to discredit the Christian claim of divine paternity and cast doubt on Jesus’ messianic legitimacy.

Importantly, this claim emerges much later than the consistent and universal testimony of the virgin birth found in early gospels and other Christian sources. The Pantera narrative's later emergence becomes more significant when compared to early Jewish-Christian dialogues that never mention this claim.

All four canonical Gospels either directly affirm or imply the virgin birth, and early non-canonical texts such as the Protoevangelium of James reinforce this tradition. Also, the earliest Christian creeds, such as the Old Roman Rule and Apostles’ Creed, and the earliest church fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of John, also affirm the virgin birth. The inclusion of this doctrine in the creeds demonstrates its centrality to early Christian faith and the belief of Jesus’ miraculous conception.

This idea of a unique birth also finds precedent even earlier in the Hebrew scriptures, with the 'seed of the woman' prophecy in Genesis 3:15. In ancient Semitic thought, procreation was generally understood to originate from the seed of man, which makes this phrase very unusual and has resulted in being interpreted by many as a divinely-ordained birth, solely from a woman.⁴

The widespread acceptance of the virgin birth within early Christianity contrasts sharply with the Pantera narrative, which appears much later after the events in question.¹⁸ This comparative lateness raises significant doubts about its historical credibility, especially when viewed against the consistent and early testimony of Jesus’ miraculous conception.

Additionally, the name 'Pantera' itself raises significant suspicion. When spoken, 'Pantera' bears a striking phonetic resemblance to the Greek word for 'virgin,' parthenos (παρθένος).¹⁹ This similarity is unlikely to be coincidental because in the sources, the construction is always “Jesus, son of Pantera” as a contrast to “Jesus, son of the Virgin.”

The contrast is intended to be stark, since 'son of the Virgin' evokes ideas of purity, divine favor, and miraculous origin, while 'son of Pantera' implies scandal, illegitimacy, and a common parentage. Furthermore, the very meaning of 'Pantera,' or
“panther,” a powerful predator, adds another layer of insult. In ancient symbolism, predatory animals were often associated with aggression, dominance, and even sexual predation.

So the choice of this name not only creates a ridiculing pun on 'virgin' but seems to imply reference to elements of the Pantera story that suggest was Jesus a the product of rape, which amplifies the intended mockery.

This deliberate wordplay and symbolic association strongly suggests that the Pantera narrative is not a genuine historical tradition but rather a polemical fabrication, a counter-narrative designed to undermine the Christian belief in the virgin birth by turning its central claim into a derogatory joke.

The later emergence of the Pantera narrative compared to the early and universal Christian testimony of the virgin birth further weakens its plausibility. It gives the appearance of a reactionary fabrication designed to discredit the well-established Christian claim rather than a genuine historical tradition.

Bitter Waters, The Divine Test

A serious blow to the Pantera argument comes not from later Christian apologetics, but from the earliest traditions themselves. The Protoevangelium of James is an orthodox, but non-canonical text composed between 140–160 AD, preserving the earliest written account of Mary’s life. But this text is not the origin of these traditions, rather, it is considered to record earlier oral material that was already widely known. This is evident from the near-universal reception of its stories across the early Church, even in regions where the text itself may not have circulated.

The Protoevangelium records that Mary underwent the bitter waters ordeal, the divinely ordained test for suspected adultery according to Jewish Law, prescribed in Numbers 5:11–31.

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘If any man’s wife goes astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him… and there is no witness against her… then the man shall bring his wife to the priest…The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water… The priest shall set the woman before the Lord… and he shall write these curses in a book, and he shall scrape them off into the bitter water... Then he shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse… and the water that brings the curse shall enter her to become bitter... When he has made her drink the water… if she has defiled herself… the water that brings a curse will enter her and become bitter, and her belly will swell, her thigh will rot, and the woman will become a curse among her people... But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and may conceive children.” (Numbers 5:11–31, condensed).

The ordeal was simple but severe: the accused woman drank holy water mixed with dust from the tabernacle floor. The priest wrote curses on a scroll and then washed the ink into the water to be drunk. This is also recorded in the rabbinic literature, like Mishnah Sotah 2:5, which says: "He writes the curses on a scroll, which includes the Divine Name, and he erases it into the bitter water."

The woman would imbibe the curses and the sacred Name of God. The dissolving of the words into the water made the woman symbolically ingest the divine judgment itself.

If guilty of adultery, divine curses would cause her “thigh to rot,” implying sterility and shame. If innocent, God would vindicate her and bless her with fertility. The key factor is that this was not human judgment but divine. The test was designed so that God Himself would reveal the truth of His judgment through supernatural intervention.

The remarkable fact is that early Christians confidently preserved the tradition of Mary undergoing this test, and did so before the Pantera accusation ever emerged. Had she actually committed adultery with Pantera or anyone else, the ritual would have exposed her guilt through divine curse. The community's willingness to record this tradition reveals their absolute certainty in her innocence.

The tradition of the Protoevangelium, accepted far and wide in the Church as reliable, roundly disproves any accusation of adultery against Mary. Since this position of suspicion was part of the plan of God, it was God Himself who vindicated her purity and innocence publicly before the community. It echoes the biblical pattern how God often tests the righteous, not to condemn, but to reveal their righteousness (e.g., Job, Abraham, Daniel).

The theological implications run even deeper. Mary was required to ingest dust from the tabernacle (or perhaps Temple) floor, the symbolic remnants of God's earthly tent at Shiloh, while simultaneously carrying in her womb the true Tabernacle, the Word who “dwelt (tabernacled) among us” (John 1:14). She ingested the place of God's Old Covenant presence while becoming the reality of God's New Covenant presence. The dust of the earthly sanctuary entered the body containing the heavenly sanctuary. The substance of the old covenant was consumed by the reality of the new. She drank in the sacred Divine Name, while carrying the bearer of that Name within her.

It is interesting to note that the bitter waters ordeal was actually abandoned by Judaism sometime shortly before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. This appears to be yet another instance where the prescription of the Law fell away once it was typologically fulfillment in Mary through Christ. This ritual was designed such that it would vindicate she who bore God by God, and then never be in common practice again.

The Pantera argument cannot endure this. The bitter waters tradition predates the Roman soldier slander by many decades, representing the earliest Christian memory rather than later defensive invention. Mary was tested under Jewish law, in God's sanctuary, under priestly supervision, and emerged vindicated by divine judgment itself. Christ, who “became a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), was in Mary’s own body, transforming the drinking of curses into a public blessing. Where Jewish polemic claims human guilt, Christian tradition records divine innocence, proven through the most rigorous test available under the old covenant.

Genealogical Registers and Christ’s Legitimacy

One seldom mentioned, but weighty piece of evidence for Christ’s legitimacy is the existence of official genealogical registers from the Second Temple period. These records were maintained for centuries by Jewish families, especially those of Davidic descent, and used to be publicly accessible.

Early Christian historian Julius Africanus (220), born in Jerusalem, refers to these in a letter preserved by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History 1.7.13–15, stating “the relatives of the Lord in the flesh” kept copies of these records and handed them down, as was the Jewish custom.

If Jesus were illegitimate, the product of adultery, as the Pantera story claims, these records would reflect it. Jewish law treated mamzerim (illegitimate children) with severity: “No mamzer shall enter the assembly of the Lord” (Deut. 23:2). A child born of adultery or unknown paternity would be excluded from Temple life, barred from full participation in covenantal Israel, and disqualified from messianic lineage.

Yet Jesus is listed in family genealogies, referred to without controversy as “son of Joseph” (John 6:42), and actively participates in synagogue and Temple life, even teaching there by age twelve (Luke 2:46). There is no trace of scandal in how His contemporaries treated Him. This is impossible to reconcile with the idea that He was widely known to be illegitimate.

The only plausible explanation is that Joseph legally adopted Jesus, exactly as the Gospels claim: “He called His name Jesus” (Matt. 1:25), a public naming act which, in Jewish law, was equivalent to claiming a child as one's own.

The genealogical records were preserved by Jewish families and known publicly. And yet, nothing in them contradicted the Gospel claim. Had there been a discrepancy like an unknown father, a broken Davidic line, Jewish opponents would certainly have pointed it out. Instead, the registers weren't treated as a liability. Instead, it was treated as evidence, and in the Gospels, those publicly verifiable genealogies were front-loaded into the first chapters with confidence.

The Contradiction

When both the Alma and Pantera arguments are taken together, they undermine each other. If the Alma argument is correct and Isaiah 7:14 only refers to a young woman giving birth, then Mary’s conception of Jesus, whether miraculous or through natural means, could still fulfill the prophecy and Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah is left untouched.

In other words, if Jesus were fathered by Pantera, but prophecy only means "a young woman will conceive," any natural circumstances of his birth are irrelevant, and Jesus still fulfills the prophecy. The Pantera argument is only damaging if the prophecy required a virgin birth, yet the Alma argument denies this necessity altogether.

Implications for the Polemics

These arguments are incompatible. If Alma simply means "young woman," then the Pantera claim becomes irrelevant, as it only disputes a miraculous conception. Conversely, if the Pantera claim is true, it undermines the need to dispute the meaning of Alma. The contradiction between these two arguments suggests they reflect a strategy of rejecting Christianity by any means available, even at the cost of logical consistency.

This approach ultimately weakens the overall polemic. If Isaiah 7:14 required a virgin birth, then the Pantera claim could be relevant; but if not, the Alma argument suffices without the need for Pantera. Trying to hold both arguments simultaneously creates a self-defeating tension.

The Virgin Birth Was Never Messianic?

Jews and skeptical scholars will sometimes claim that Isaiah 7:14 only referred to a birth contemporary with Isaiah and King Ahaz, and was never meant to be understood messianically, and in fact, there is no clear evidence that it was understood messianically prior to the Christian claims.

However, one ought to also consider that we only have a selection of writings from pre-Christian times that could give us indication of what the interpretations and expectations were. The Jewish world of the Second Temple period was religiously diverse, with various sects, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and others, holding differing views on the Messiah.

Some messianic expectations are preserved in sources like the Dead Sea Scrolls, but these represent only a slice of what was believed. Very little at all survives in writing from over 2000 years ago, let alone the minutiae of Jewish messianic expectation of particular verses.

So, in this context, the silence is not very telling. I think it is very likely that there was an interpretation that included it and the virgin birth being so prominent in Christianity is the artifact of that. Christians would not likely make such an "outlandish" claim unless:

1. It was true, or

2. 2. It was part of the expectation,

3. 3. or both.

The sheer audacity of the Christian claim must be considered. The idea of a virgin birth would have been, at best, controversial and, at worst, completely laughable in both Jewish and Greco-Roman circles. There was no pragmatic advantage to fabricating such a claim unless it had some basis in either expectation or reality. If no strand of Jewish thought contained even the faintest notion of a miraculous messianic birth, why would the first Christians put forth such an easily dismissible or seemingly absurd assertion? It seems more plausible that either there was already some interpretive precedent for this idea or the reality of the event itself forced early Christians to re-examine scripture and recognize a meaning in Isaiah 7:14 that had been previously overlooked. In either case, the notion that Christians invented the virgin birth without any foundation in Jewish thought is difficult to maintain.

Thus, the argument that Isaiah 7:14 was never seen as messianic before Christianity is based on an argument from silence. While explicit pre-Christian evidence may be lacking, the translation of parthenos, the broader biblical pattern and typology of divinely-guided births, and the impracticality of inventing such a claim all suggest that some Jewish circles could have already interpreted the passage in a messianic light. If this expectation existed, then the Christian proclamation of the virgin birth is not a contrived attempt to fit Jesus into a contrived prophecy, but instead, the fulfillment of an already latent reading of the text. The audacity of the claim itself is evidence of the event, regardless of expectations.

It sets up a dichotomy where either:

1. The Virgin Birth occurred and was expected (meaning some pre-Christian Jewish tradition already saw Isaiah 7:14 as messianic and was anticipating a virgin birth). Or,

2. The Virgin Birth occurred, but not expected (meaning no clear pre-Christian expectation of a virgin-born Messiah existed.

If the second case is true, then the inclusion of the virgin birth in the Gospels is puzzling unless it actually happened, because it was unnecessary for messianic expectations.

If Isaiah 7:14 wasn’t widely seen as messianic or predicting a virgin birth, then there was no pressure to fabricate it. The early Christians didn’t need a virgin birth to claim Jesus was the Messiah. It was only included because it occurred in truth, regardless of expectation. Such a claim risked skepticism.

A virgin birth was naturally a radical claim that would invite doubt, especially in Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. If it was invented, it would be a strange choice when simpler ways to bolster Jesus’ messianic credentials (like focusing on Davidic lineage and miraculous deeds) were available.

It should be noted that none of the early critiques of the Virgin Birth, whether from Celsus, St. Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypo, or later rabbinic polemics, try to invalidate the Virgin Birth based on a prior lack of Jewish expectation. If it were an entirely novel idea, the ferocity of their objections would likely have included it.

Ultimately, regardless of if it was expected or not, it aligns with Biblical prophetic fulfillment themes. Even if Isaiah 7:14 wasn’t universally seen as messianic beforehand, its fulfillment in Jesus would still be valid under the biblical pattern of prophecy where many prophecies only become clear in hindsight.

The absence of an argument like "Nobody predicted this, so it must be false" is significant. If it had been a decisive argument, critics likely would have used it. Instead, their responses suggest they took the claim seriously and sought to undermine it in other ways, by attacking Mary’s character, questioning the prophecy’s meaning, or proposing alternative explanations.

Conclusion

The Jewish polemics against the virgin birth fail to work together coherently. Instead, they reveal a contradiction that weakens their case against the Christian claim.

The Alma argument is rooted in post-Christian revisionism and struggles against the historical fact that parthenos was the original Jewish translation in the Septuagint. The Pantera argument, emerging later, lacks historical credibility when compared to the early, consistent testimony of the virgin birth. Together, these arguments expose their own contradictions and inadvertently reinforce the strength of the claims they seek to deny.

If the Virgin Birth were a lie, it would have died in the streets. Instead, it was attacked, twisted, and mocked, but it was never ignored. The mockery of enemies is often the clearest witness that the Church told the truth.

1Young, Edward J. 1965. The Book of Isaiah: The English Text, with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 284–286.

2Schäfer, Peter. 2007. Jesus in the Talmud. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 15–24, 98–102.

3Joosten, Jan. 2018. "The Septuagint of Isaiah and the Issue of Messianic Interpretation." Journal of Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 228–246.

4Hamilton, Victor P. 1990. The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 196–198.