110
NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. vm. AUG. 9, 1913.
was sacred to her also in her Ephesian form
of Artemis, to Athene and to Dionysus ; and
the Egyptian priests wore its skin as a
ceremonial vestment.* The chita appears
to have been domesticated in Western Asia
at a very early period ; according to Sir
William Jones, its employment in hunting
dates from B.C. 865, under the Persian king
Hushing. The leopard we may then sup-
pose to have been in a remote age the totem
of some influential tribe of Aryan speech in
Phrygia or Mitanni, as it is to-day of hill-
men in Formosa, who keep it caged in their
villages. Might we not then accept Strauss's
above-mentioned derivation, applying it,
however, not to the name of the Talmudic
personage, but to that of the animal ? These
tribesmen Would certainly speak of their
totem leopard, as their " relation," using
some word allied to 7rei/0epo? (the Sanskrit
and Pali bdndhu, -o. perhaps the Latin
af-fin-is), which their Greek neighbours
wrote, probably incorrectly, as TrdvOyp,
and thus made it a seeming compound of
two genuine Greek Words. So to-day (to
take one instance of a universal custom
among totemistic peoples) the tribesmen
inhabiting the shores of the Gulf of Car-
pentaria will reproachfully exclaim, when
any one has slaughtered their totem animal,
" You have killed our father ! You have
killed our brother ! "f
Another suggestion has been made regard- ing the Pandira of Jewish writings that it might be -a variant or corruption of pandura, which appears in a Talmudic list of a shepherd's belongings, and which Bux- torf explains as meaning " scourge " (flagel- lum], though he also suggests that it might mean a musical instrument, an explanation adopted by later lexicographers.* By a
- See the chapter on the panther in Otto
Keller's most learned and interesting work ' Tiere des classischen Alterthums,' Innsbruck, 1887, and in his lately published ' Antike Tier- welt,' Leipzig, 1912.
t May we not regard the terms of kinship, Father, Brother, Father-in-law, used as epithets of Deity in Hebrew names, e.g. Abhr&m, JL'Miah
- Hamutal, as survivals from the totemic stage of
culture ?
J J. Levy, ' Neuhebr. u. Chald. Worterbuch, and M. Jastrow, ' Diet, of the Targumim,' identify it with the three -stringed lute (Gr. -rravdovpa) Could some reminiscence of the word in this sense have helped to originate the symbolism of the Catacombs, where Christ is depicted as Orpheus who charmed the beasts and brought up the dead from Hades
Threicia fretus cithera fidib usque canoris ?
strange chance, however, the word "A/38rj<s
dentical in spelling with the other native
name of the Sidonian soldier, Abdes Pantera,
hose epitaph is discussed in Prof. A. Deiss-
nann's book ' Light from the Ancient East '
the New Testament illustrated by recently
discovered texts), trans, by L. R. M. Strachan,
M.A., Hodder & Stoughton, 1910 (see US.
vii. 381) is also explained as "scourge"
<f>payy\\iov) by Hesychius, who found it
n some work, since lost, of the Ephesian
satirist Hipponax. This writer would be
well known to Jews who had received a Greek
education, and the passages in which he ridi-
culed the heathen gods, and in one of which
the Word may have occurred, would be par-
ticularly welcome to them. The opponents
of Jesus, accepting the story that his father
was named Abdes, might mockingly call him
' son of a scourge " (cf. John ii. 14, 15).
Perhaps a few additional remarks may be permitted on the name Barabbas, which, it has been suggested (11 S. vii. 381), may have been originally Barabdas. The Freer text* has the reading Barnabas instead of Barabbas in Mark xv. 7, 11, and in the latter verse has the support of the Sahidic version, a variation which shows the uncertainty of the traditional spelling. Lightfoot describes the name Barabba as " nomen apud Talmud, usitatissimum," but cites no instance in which the patronymic appears without a personal name prefixed- The insertion of the personal name Jesus before Barabbas in Matt, xxvii. 16, 17, is imperatively re- quired by the context; and the 6 Aeyo/^ros of Mark xv. 7 points strongly in the same direction. The scribe of the famous Vatican Codex, supposed to be one of those Written at Csesarea by order of Con- stantine, evidently had it in his archetype of Matt., I.e., for, while he omitted 'Ljo-ovi/ in both verses, he allowed the tell-tale TOV to remain in verse 17. (See Mr. F. C. Burkitt's note, ' Encycl. Bibl.,' c. 4990.) Origens' expressions clearly imply that in his day most copies had the reading. f and such a result could scarcely be due, as Tregelles maintained, to a scribe's blunder. Amongst the distinguished scholars who think the
- * The Freer N.T. Facsimile,' edited by H. A.
Sanders, New York, 1913.
t This is not generally recognized. Even in Sir Fred. Kenyon's excellent ' Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the N.T.,' 2nd ed., p. 155, it is merely stated that the reading " Jesus B." was found in " ... .some manuscripts mentioned by Origen."
