Claudius Lysias was the Roman Tribune in Jerusalem in A.D. 57 who saved the Apostle Paul from the Jewish Zealots in Jerusalem who tried to kill him.
The secular Romanized Jewish historian Josephus tells us that the Roman Tribune in Jerusalem in A.D. 57 was Claudius Lysias. In the 23rd chapter of his Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist confirmed that. Lysias is the Tribune who saves Paul’s life when the heterodox Jerusalem Judaizers (i.e. the Jewish zealots) through Paul out of the temple during the festival of Pentecost in A.D. 57, and try to kill Paul (repeatedly).
A Roman Tribune was the commander of a Roman cohort. A cohort is the 10th part of a Roman Legion, which is between 600 and 1,000 men. So Lysias is the “top cop” in Jerusalem and he is portrayed as a wise ruler, who wants to understand the basis for the dispute between the Jewish Zealots & the Sanhedrin and Paul & the “sect of the Nazarenes”.
Lange's Christian Chronicle 