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Excerpt from Some Interesting Syrian and Palestinian Inscriptions
To the proposed question we may reply that there is nothing resulting from the study of the sarcophagus to prevent us from attributing it to a relative of the Claudius Lysias of the Acts for it is, as the artistic structure shews, of extreme antiquity. But the Claudius Lysias in the Acts was the first, although, as we shall shew, not the only one of that name. He had purchased the Roman freedom and, as he confesses to Paul, paid no Slight sum for it. None of his family, then, had borne the name of Claudius before him. The genuineness of the allusion to the purchase of the Roman citizenship is borne out by the historical allusions to the sale of the privilege, especially by freedmen and others belonging to the gens Claudia who played the part of broker to more distinguished people.
We infer then that there is a probability, and not necessarily a slight one, that the Greek or Syrian who had bought himself the rights of the gens Claudia and occupied an important military position in the Roman army at Jerusalem, was an ancestor of the very person who is commemorated on our sarcophagus.
That he was not a Jew may be seen from the fact that he was willing to converse with St Paul, provided it was in Greek; and that, when the mob tried to drown the voice of the Apostle addressing them in Aramaic, Lysias proposed to apply torture that he might find out why they SO cried out upon him.
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