Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society
Religion
Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society
Church of England; Skepticism; Skepticism -- Controversial literature
Again, it has been said that St. Luke erred in stating that Lysanias
was tetrarch of Abilene (iii. 1) in the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius Cæsar.[102] Lysanias, it is said, died sixty years previously;
and St. Luke has ignorantly made him alive, being deceived by the fact
that Abilene continued to be called "the Abilene of Lysanias," after
its former ruler, for sixty or seventy years subsequently. Now here
it is in the first place assumed, without any word of proof, that the
Lysanias who died B.C. 34 once ruled over Abilene. Secondly, it is
assumed, also without any word of proof, that Abilene came to be known
as "the Abilene of Lysanias," from him. I venture to assert that there
is absolutely no ground for believing that the old Lysanias was ever
ruler of Abilene; and I venture to maintain that Abilene came to be
called "the Abilene of Lysanias" from a second or later Lysanias, a
son of the former one, who is the person intended by St. Luke. Till
recently, Christian apologists were defied to show historically that
there was ever more than one Lysanias, and were accused of inventing a
second to escape a difficulty. But a few years since, a discovery was
made which must be regarded by all reasonable persons as having set the
whole matter at rest. This was an inscription found near Baalbek,[103]
containing a dedication of a memorial tablet or statue to "Zenodorus,
son of the tetrarch Lysanias, and to Lysanias, her children," by
(apparently) the widow of the first, and the mother of the second
Lysanias. Zenodorus was already known as having succeeded the first
Lysanias in his government. It is thus clear, that there were, as
previously suspected, two persons of the name, a father, and a son, and
there is not the slightest reason for doubting St. Luke's statement
that the latter was tetrarch of Abilene in the fifteenth of Tiberius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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