ITURAEA ĭt’ yŏŏr e’ ə, a small principality in the northern section of Pal. which included the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges and the Lake country around Huleh with its watershed. The capitol was at Chalcis. It is mentioned only in Luke 3:1 as one of the sections of Pal. ruled over by the tetrarch Philip, the brother of Herod, and like him, an Idumaean. The Gr. term is usually written in the masc. pl. as, Ιτουραιοι, “The Ituraean men.” It was thought, though not without disagreement, to be derived from the name of one of Ishmael’s sons, Jetur, Heb. יְט֥וּר, LXX Ιεττουρ (1 Chron 1:31). With the decline of the power of the Seleucid empire which had come into being after the Alexandrian conquest, the native rulers and their vassals began to carve out of the decaying central administration little principalities of their own. Not the least of these was Ituraea established in the region known to the Seleucids as Coelesyria. Stephanus of Byzantium, a geographer of the time of Constantine IV, emperor of Constantinople c. a.d. 685, records a chieftain of the Arabs, Maniko, who established a dynasty of indigenous princes at Chalcis. The secondary capitol of this dynasty was Heliopolis. The tribespeople of Ituraea who were prob. of Arab ancestry, utilized the Aram. language which was then the linqua franca of Syria-Pal. and large portions of the Near E. They also adopted a large portion of the mixed Gr. and Sem. culture which was then in vogue. In 161 b.c. Judas Maccabaeus defeated the army of Nicanor the commander of the Seleucid forces; thus was the Jewish independence of Antioch assured. During the era of the remaining Maccabees and their successors the political fortunes of Israel continued to expand into the power vacuum which existed between Ptolemaic Egypt on the S and Seleucid Syria on the N. Judah (John) Hyrcanus the second Hasmonean ruler continued this policy in the N and his son, Judah (Gr. Aristobulus) captured a large portion of the area of Ituraea in 105-104 b.c. The inhabitants were circumcised and forced to become Jews (Jos Antiq. XIII, 9, 3). The Ituraeans are mentioned by Strabo who locates them, “all the mountainous areas are occupied by Ituraeans and Arabians, all of whom are brigands...

These brigands use strongholds as bases...” (Geography, XVI, 2, 18), and an inscr. of the time of P. Sulpicius Quirinus (c. a.d. 5) indicates that the Ituraeans had established themselves on the plain of Massyas between Laodicea and their capitol of Chalcis. Some coinage is known from the eras before and after the Jewish conquest. Aristobulus was a popular ruler among the Gr. and Arab elements in his Jewish kingdom so much so that Josephus refers to him the phrase, “χρηματισας φιλελλην,” “titled Greek lover.” The Pharisees did not approve of this new pro-Gr. aristocracy nor did they favor a kingship which was not of the Davidic family. In 65 b.c. Rome began its eastward expansion under the consulship of G. Pompey who soon conquered the northern reaches of Syria and finally took Jerusalem. He enlarged the province of Cilicia and generally settled matters between the previously disputing royalty of the Near E. The ruler of Ituraea was a certain Ptolemy son of Menneus who ruled from Chalcis 85 b.c. to about 40 b.c. He sent Pompey a payment of 1,000 talents to assure Rome’s agreement to his tenure as Ituraean king. He shielded the last of the Hasmoneans and was reasonably able to stay aloof from Rom. interference, however, his son Lysanias was murdered by the agents of Cleopatra with the compliance of Antony, c. 36 b.c. (Jos. Antiq. XV, 92, 3). At this time the once sizable realm was greatly diminished although the name was still retained for the area of Chalcis and its environs. Another and more obscure Lysanias then inherited the throne of Ituraea. He may have been a descendant of the king of the same name murdered by Cleopatra, in any case he held his kingdom by the authority of Rome. It is he who is mentioned in Luke 3:1 as the tetrarch of Abilene, one of the remnants into which the old Ituraean state had been divided. Herod the Great and his grand son, Herod, had both annexed segments of the old state to their holdings. When Herod died the Rom. ruler O. Augustus then added the area to that ruled by the tetrarch Philip about 4 b.c. His lands consisted of Auranitis, Batanea and Trachonitis, all of which once had been sections of the Arab kingdom of Ituraea and it was this fact which Luke assumes in the statement, “Philip tetrarch of Ituraea.” When the Syria-Pal. political system was again overhauled after the invasion of Titus, c. a.d. 70, Ituraea disappeared from the map.