ABILENE (Vulgate: Abilina). - Tetrarchy (Luke 3:1), so named from its capital Abila, often mentioned by Flavius Josephus as Abila of Lysanias.

Abila stood east of the Anti-Lebanon, near the river Barada (v. ABANA), 26 km northwest of Damascus (cf. Itinerarium Antonini, n. 198, 5-6: Itineraria Romana, ed. O. Cuntz, Leipzig 1929, p. 27), on the road to Heliopolis (Baalbek). It corresponds today to Sük Wadi Baradá, near which the ancient ruins were discovered; an onomastic memory of it is preserved in the nearby Weli Abil, or supposed (by the Arabs) tomb of Abel, son of Adam.

A. was part, at least until the death of Herod the Great, of the kingdom of Chalcis, where Ptolemy (85-40 B.C.), son of Mennaeus, reigned, and was succeeded by his son Lysanias, killed by Antony at the instigation of Cleopatra, who took possession of a large part of those domains. After 4 B.C., A. was constituted as a tetrarchy (as appears not only from the cited passage of Luke, but also from a recently discovered inscription: cf. Revue Bibl., new series, 9 [1912], pp. 533-540), which during the fifteenth year of Tiberius (14-37 A.D.) we find governed by Lysanias Junior, then by Herod Agrippa I (37-44), by the Roman procurators, and finally by Herod Agrippa II (53-93). At the latter's death, A. was definitively annexed to the Roman province of Syria.

Bibliography

BIBL.: E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, I, 5th ed., Leipzig 1920, pp. 716-20.

Gaetano M. Perrella

@incollection{ec1_abilene_volgata_abilina, author = {Perrella, Gaetano Maria}, title = {Abilene (Volgata: Abilina)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {80--81}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/abilene-volgata-abilina} }

One of some 20,000 entries brought back from the twelve printed volumes (1948–54). Spotted something? Help us improve it.

About this entry