The Panther: Posthumous Poems

Through a series of dramatic monologues (spoken by Mary, the Angel Gabriel, Paul of Tarsus, and the “Sidonian archer,” Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera), the fourteen poems gathered here give life to the Jewish-apocryphal legend of “Jesus, son of Pantera”—the story that Jesus was sired by a Roman soldier. Having learned of a tomb (unearthed in Germany) bearing the soldier’s name, Whitehead spent the last years of his life researching and writing about this fascinating, controversial tradition. In his introduction to the collection, renowned Biblical scholar James Tabor recounts the Scriptural, apocryphal, and archaeological evidence upon which the story is based.