ABILENE (Vulgate: Abilina). - A tetrarchy (Lk. 3:1), so named after its capital Abila, often mentioned by Flavius Josephus as Abila of Lysanias.
Abila stood east of Anti-Lebanon, near the river Barada (v. ADANA), 26 km northwest of Damascus (cf. Itinerarium Antonini, no. 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 alleged (by the Arabs) tomb of Abel, son of Adam.
Abilene formed 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; he was succeeded by his son Lysanias, killed by Antony at the instigation of Cleopatra, who came into possession of a large part of those dominions. After 4 B.C., Abilene was constituted 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 (A.D. 14-37) 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 his death, Abilene was definitively annexed to the Roman province of Syria.
BBL.: E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, I, 5th ed., Lipsa 1920, pp. 716-20. Gaetano M. Perrella