ITUREA. — Greek and Roman writers call I. the region occupied by the Itureans, a nomadic tribe descended from the Israelite Jethur (Gen. 25:15), who migrated through Transjordan (1 Chron. 5:19) into the north and settled in the Beqāʿ between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon (Strabo, XVI, 2, 20).
Together with other nomadic Arabs, they acknowledged the authority of the dynasty of Chalcis (= Hirbet Angar): Ptolemy son of Menneus (84–40 BC) and later his successor Lysanias I (40–34 BC) (= of the Itureans) (Dio Cassius, 49, 32). After Lysanias was killed in 34 BC by the triumvir Antony at Cleopatra’s instigation (Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Iudaicae, XV, 4, 1), the kingdom stretching from the Mediterranean to Damascus was divided into small states. The southern part, south and southeast of Mount Hermon, including Ulatha (= Arq el-Huleh) and Paneas (= Baniyas), was entrusted to Zenodorus, a relative of Lysanias, who resided at el-Quneitrah, as seems indicated by a fragmentary epitaph. This portion of territory is the one that Aristobulus annexed to Judea in 104 BC after forcing its inhabitants to submit, and which Pompey restored to independence in 60 BC, seeking to return Judea’s borders to the proper limits of Galilee. Upon Zenodorus’s death (20 BC), Augustus united Ulatha and Paneas to the kingdom of Herod the Great, and at Herod’s death the emperor granted this territory, along with Trachonitis, Batanea, and Auranitis, to his son Philip, whom Luke 3:1 calls “tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis.” Since the Itureans as a homogeneous group are mentioned by Flavius Josephus (Antiquitates Iudaicae, XV, 16, 5) with their king Soaemus (38–49 AD), the phrase in St. Luke must be understood broadly to refer to the territory of Zenodorus in the old southern Iturea, which Flavius Josephus (Bellum Iudaicum, I, 33) includes in the expression “Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis and the neighboring regions.” After Philip’s death (4–34 AD), the emperor Tiberius annexed the territory to the province of Syria.