I had heard somewhere that there was no such thing as “the immaculate conception” (gasp!) but that Jesus was really the son of a Roman soldier named Pantera who had fallen in love with Mary and impregnated her. Supposedly, when Pantera’s bosses found out he had fraternized with a ‘local’, they reassigned him elsewhere, and Joseph, who was Mary’s childhood chum, agreed to marry Mary so she would have a husband to care for her and provide for the child. Also, I had heard that Jesus was NOT called Jesus, he was known as Yoshe bin (son of) Pantera. I had just read a very entertaining work of fiction from Arthur C. Clarke called “The Light of Other Days” that, although fiction, seemed to support this. In the afterword of his book, he says he had gotten that from A. N. Wilson’s biography, “Jesus” (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992) but I cannot find that book anywhere. At the risk of turning theologists against me, does anyone know the STRAIGHT DOPE? -Jake
First things first: it’s the Incarnation, not the Immaculate Conception. The IC referrs to Mary being conceived w/o original sin. OK, now we can address your question. A zillion people have wrote books guessing about the Incarnation (calling them “theories” is being too generous). 99.99% of those guesses are pulled straight out of the author’s ass, and of those, a further 99.5% are just to get the author a little publicity. If you can’t find the book anywhere, then it’s probably not even worth looking at.
I’d wondered about the “son of Pantera” thing, too. For the longest time I couldn’t find nything more than the original citation that told me about it – a footnote in T.H. White’s wonderful book The Bestiary. But finally I found a mother lode of information on this odd little (and little-publicized) bit of Christian lore.
Get thee a copy of Morton Smith’s book Jesus the Magician. He assembles al the evience and citations. Read his book with more than a grain of salt, though, because, even though he’s a professor of theology, he has a tendency to uncritically accept theories he’s fallen in love with. In the case of Jesus bin Pantera, he assumes that all of the information he’s gathered must all originally have been part of a single tradition, which is wholly unjustified. Further, he assumes that this story he’s ferreted out and asembled must be true. His book is an extremely valuable compendium, but don’t uncritically accept his conclusions.
Ben Pantera probably refers to Jesus, but there’s a possibility it doesn’t. You find the name in early Rabbinic literature, but only a few times.
Here’s a website that looks at different possible references to Jesus:
That rather depends how much effort you put into finding it. It’s out of print but there are plenty of secondhand copies in circulation.
Wilson is by no means a major expert on the subject - he’s more a journalist/novelist/whatever, being a reasonably prominent literary figure in the UK - but his Jesus is certainly superior to most attempts to write a biography of Jesus for a general readership. Offhand, I can’t remember whether he actually endorses that particular theory.
Jesus was in Pantera?
I knew they rocked, but dude… Jesus!
From The Man: Did Jesus really exist? And what’s with the Shroud of Turin?
(bolding mine for emphasis)
So, there’s a cite. Get thee to reading the Talmud!
A>N> Wilson’s Jesus is still in print in the Uk- try
if you want it- only about $10.00.
I have a copy and can confirm that he gives the Judaic references to Jesus bin pantera.
The whole book is an attempt to write a biography as would be done for any historical personage- just relying on the available sources and comparing and contrasting possibilities. It is extremely successful in this aim. Don’t go here if you are looking for support for any religious connotations of Jesus- Wilson is definite that he is not writing of the Christ of faith, cut of the jesus of History.
Must Preview 
In the last line read ‘but’ for ‘cut’
The problem with the Talmudic stories that most people identify with Jesus is that the details don’t match what’s known of him from the Gospels.
The person in the Talmudic story lived about 100 years earlier than Pontius Pilate.
He had five disciples
He was executed and hanged in accordance with Jewish law. Crucifixion was not a Jewish method of execution.
Zev Steinhardt
There is considerable question about the references to Jesus by Josephus. We have no “original” copies of Josephus’ texts, the earliest we have were copied (remember, there was no printing press, each copy was hand-copied) well into the Christian Era, and there is strong suggestion that Josephus’ writings were edited by some pious Christian scribe to include references to Jesus.
Well, and that’s assuming that Yeshu and Ben Pantera are the same person, too.