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Bible Dictionaries
Lysanias
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or LYSANIAS.—This name is given by St. Luke (Luke 3:1) among those who ruled in the various parts of Syria and Palestine at the time when John the Baptist entered upon his public work. The name does not again occur in the NT. A Lysanias is mentioned by Dio Cassius (xlix. 32) as having been made king of Ituraea by Mark Antony and afterwards put to death by him. This same Lysanias is also spoken of by Josephus (Ant. xv. iv. 1), who adds that Antony was moved to the step of putting Lysanias to death by Cleopatra, on the ground that he had conspired against her with the Parthians. The same Lysanias and his connexion with the Parthians are alluded to also elsewhere by Josephus (BJ i. xiii. 1; Ant. xiv. xiii. 3). The data agree in making him the son of Ptolemy, and locating his reign between b.c. 40 and 36. A Lysanias is mentioned again by Josephus in Ant. xviii. vi. 10 and XX. vii. 1. In both of these passages the territory over which he ruled is designated a tetrarchy (cf. BJ ii. xi. 5, xii. 8; Ant. xix. v. 1).
The question raised by these data is, Does Josephus know two men of the name or one? If he knows two, the Lysanias of St. Luke is evidently the second, and no further difficulty exists. If, however, he has the same man in mind throughout, the question next emerging is as to whether St. Luke knew and alluded to another and younger Lysanias, or erroneously identified the only ruler of that name with the times of the public appearance of John the Baptist and Jesus. In favour of the latter view, it is alleged that Josephus never gives any intimation of a difference between the two men of the name, and in fact does not at first reading seem to know two. His readers were bound, it is argued, to suppose that the Lysanias who was executed in b.c. 36 is meant wherever the name is used. St. Luke was acquainted with the writings of Josephus, but did not use them with accuracy, and an error is quite probable. He makes an error in defining the limits of the realm of Philip, Ituraea. It is not held that an error can be demonstrated in his statement regarding Lysanias, but the probability is said to be for such an error, and the grounds for believing in a second Lysanias are regarded as unsatisfying. This view was propounded by Strauss, and has been supported by Keim, Krenkel, and Sehmiedel.
Per contra, that there were two men of the name is argued from various considerations. (1) Though Josephus does not explicitly say that he is speaking of two distinct persons, his descriptions imply such a distinction. Lysanias the son of Ptolemy was not a tetrarch, but bore the title of king (so he is also called by Dio Cassius). (2) The limits of the territories over which the Lysaniases of Josephus ruled are different. The elder Lysanias inherited from his father a kingdom including Chalkis on the Lebanon. This was not, however, included in the realm of the tetrarch Lysanias. (3) Abila was associated with the name of the tetrarch, but not with that of the son of Ptolemy. (4) During the reign of Tiberius, or at least 50 years after the death of the first Lysanias, a certain Nymphaeus built a road and erected a temple, and left an account of these acts in an extant inscription (CIG [Note: IG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum.] 4521). In this inscription he calls himself ‘a freedman of Lysanias.’ It is impossible that he should have been the freedman of the son of Ptolemy. He must be regarded as living under the tetrarch. (5) Another inscription at Heliopolis, whose lacunœ have been filled out by Renan, renders it exceedingly probable that there were more than one ruler bearing the name in question. (6) A coin discovered by Poeocke at Nebhi-Abel (Abila) bears the superscription Λυσανίου τετράρχ. καὶ ἀρχιερέως. But as Dio calls the first Lysanias a king, it is at least doubtful that the lower title of tetrarch should appear on his own coin. In that case the coin must have been struck by the second Lysanias. (7) Finally, an inscription (CIG [Note: IG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum.] 4523) informs us that Lysanias the son of Ptolemy left children behind him. It is probable that the names Lysanias and Zenodorus were dynastic names, and that the second Lysanias was given the name of him who was put to death in 36. This is the view supported by S. Davidson, Wieseler, Renan, Schürer, Plummer, and others.
An earlier effort to establish the historical accuracy of St. Luke’s statement regarding Lysanias was made by Paulus (Com. i. 1) through the suggestion that the word τετραρχοῦντος should be erased from St. Luke’s text, or that it should be connected with Φιλίππου, making Philip the ‘tetrareh of Ituraea, Trachonitis, and the Abilene of Lysanias,’ i.e. of that province of which Lysanias had been tetrarch in his day. But this has always been considered an arbitrary way of dealing with the text, resorted to solely for the purpose of saving the historical precision of the Evangelist, and has not found much favour in any quarter.
Literature.—Strauss, Leben Jesu, 1835, pp. 310–313; S. Davidson, Intr. to NT, i. pp. 214–221; Wieseler, Chron. Synop. d. vier Evang. 1843, pp. 174–183, Beitr, z. Würdigung der Evang. 1869, pp. 194–204; Herzog-Plitt, PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopädie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] 2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 1877, art. ‘Abilene’; Renan, Mém. de l’ A cad. d’Inser. 26. 6, 1870, pp. 49–84; Keim, Gesch. Jesu von Nazara, i. 618, ii. 384; Krenkel, Josephus u. Lucas, 1894, pp. 95–98; Schürer, GJV [Note: JV Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes.] 3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , 1901, i. pp. 716–720 [HJP [Note: JP History of the Jewish People.] i. ii. 335]; Plummer, Com. on St. Luke, 1900, p. 84; Schmiedel, Ency. Bibl. art. ‘Lysanias.’
A. C. Zenos.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Lysanias'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/l/lysanias.html. 1906-1918.
