Tetrarch of Abilene living at the time of the New Testament
Lysanias, the tetrarch of Abilene, ruled during the time of John the Baptist's ministry (Luk.3.1).
🗺 Places mentioned alongside Lysanias on the map →
Lysanias was the tetrarch of Abilene, a region located in the Anti-Lebanon mountains, during the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar (Luk.3.1). He is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as one of the rulers in power when John the Baptist began his ministry. The title "tetrarch" indicates that Lysanias governed a portion of a divided territory. Historical records suggest that he may have been a descendant of an earlier Lysanias who ruled Chalcis and was executed by Mark Antony in 36 BC. Apart from this brief mention in Luke's Gospel, no further details about Lysanias' life or rule are provided in the Bible. His inclusion in the list of rulers helps to establish the historical and political context of John the Baptist's ministry and the beginning of Jesus' public ministry.
More background: search Wikipedia ↗
Tetrarch of Abilene (Luke 3:1), on the eastern slope of Anti-Lebanon, near the city of Damascus.
(that drives away sorrow), mentioned by St. Luke in one of his chronological passages, ch. (Luke 3:1) as being tetrarch. of Abilene (i.e. the district round Abila) in the thirteenth year of Tiberius (A.D. 26), at the time when Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee and Herod Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis.
that drives away sorrow
LYSA'NIAS. See Abilene.
Easton (1897), Smith (1863), Hitchcock (1869), Hastings (1898) and Schaff are in the public domain. Parsed text: neuu-org/bible-dictionary-dataset (CC BY 4.0). Headwords and whitespace normalised for this site.
1 verse in 1 book · English text: BSB (change it from the menu at the top) · Strong’s G3078
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,
Names, family links and references: STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House Cambridge, CC BY 4.0). Short descriptions were drafted with AI assistance by STEPBible. Family links follow STEPBible’s scholarly decisions where genealogies are ambiguous.