Lysanias

This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, this section (and the whole article, actually) constantly misses the point. The article is (apparently) about a Lysanias mentioned by Joseph, who died in 33 BC: the inscription discussed in this section is about a tetrarch Lysanias, who lived at the time of Tiberius Augustus (and so possibly the same Lysanias as Luke's) or at the time of Augustus (so a third Lysanias, since Octavian became Augustus in 27 BC). In either case he cannot possibly be Joseph's Lysanias! The article is more concerned about disproving or proving Luke, than establishing facts about Joseph's Lysanias. Please help clarify the section. There might be a discussion about this on the talk page. (August 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Two inscriptions have been ascribed to Lysanias.^[8] The name is conjectural in the latter case.^{[citation needed]}

The first, a temple inscription found at Abila, named Lysanias as the Tetrarch of the locality.^[9]

The temple inscription reads:

It has been thought that the reference to August lords as a joint title was given only to the emperor Tiberius (adopted son of Augustus) and his mother Livia (widow of Augustus).^[10] If this analysis is correct, this reference would establish the date of the inscription to between 14 AD (when Tiberius began to reign) and 29 AD (when Livia died), and thus could not be reasonably interpreted as referring to the ruler executed by Mark Antony in 36 BC. While Livia received suitable honors while Augustus was still alive, such as "Benefactor Goddess" (Θεα Εύεργέτις) at a temple at Thassos, she was not called Augusta or ΣΕΒΑΣΤΗ until after Augustus’s death and her adoption into the Julia gens in AD 14.^[11][12]

The reference to Lysanias in Luke 3:1, dated to the fifteenth year of Tiberius, has caused some debate over whether this Lysanias is the same person son of Ptolemy, or some different person.

Some say that the Lysanias whose tetrarchy was given to Agrippa cannot be the Lysanias executed by Antony, since his paternal inheritance, even allowing for some curtailment by Pompey, must have been of far greater extent.^[6] Therefore, the Lysanias in Luke (28–29) is a younger Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene only, one of the districts into which the original kingdom was split up after the death of Lysanias I. This younger Lysanias may have been a son of the latter, and identical with, or the father of, the Claudian Lysanias.^[6]

But Josephus does not refer to a second Lysanias. It is therefore suggested by others^[6] that he really does refer to the original Lysanias, even though the latter died decades earlier. In The Jewish War Josephus refers to the realm as being "called the kingdom of Lysanias",^[13] while Ptolemy writing c. 120 in his Geography Bk 5 refers to Abila as "called of Lysanias"^[14]

The explanation given by M. Krenkel (Josephus und Lucas, Leipzig, 1894, p. 97)^[6] is that Josephus does not mean to imply that Abila was the only possession of Lysanias, and that he calls it the tetrarchy or kingdom of Lysanias because it was the last remnant of the domain of Lysanias which remained under direct Roman administration until the time of Agrippa.^[6]

• WRIGHT, N.L. 2013: “Ituraean coinage in context.” Numismatic Chronicle 173: 55–71. (available online here)