LYSANIAS

(Ly·saʹni·as) [ending sorrow].

The district ruler or tetrarch of Abilene when John the Baptist began his ministry (29 C.E.), during the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s rule. (Luke 3:1) This Roman tetrarchy had its capital at Abila, near Damascus of Syria. An inscription of the time of Tiberius Caesar found there commemorates a temple dedication by a freedman of “Lysanias the tetrarch.” Because Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, Book XV, chap. IV, par. 1) refers to a Lysanias executed about 36 B.C.E. by Mark Antony at Cleopatra’s instigation, some have charged Luke with inaccuracy. However, Luke did not err, for the Lysanias he mentions is not the same person as the earlier Lysanias (the son of Ptolemy) who, before being executed, ruled, not Abilene, but nearby Chalcis, and who is not called a tetrarch.