For the history and religion of Israel in apostolic times see artt. Pharisees, Herod.
LiTBRATUEB. — Josephus, Ant., BJ ; H. Ewald, Gesch. det Volkes Israel, Gottingen, 1864-66; E. Schiirer, GJV*, Leipzig, 1901-11 ; C. von Weizsacker, Apostolic A(je, Eng. tr., 1894- 95. The following Commentaries on the relevant passages maj
ISRAELITE
ITALY
623
be cited : on Romans : Calvin (1844), Olshausen (1866), Meyer (1872), Denney (£6^, 1900), Sanday-Headlam (ICC, 1902); on Hebrews : A. B. Davidson (1882), Westcott (1889). See also the artt. ' Israel, History of," in HDD, ' Israel, Israelite' in hCG, 'Israel' in EBi, and 'Hebrew Religion' in EBr.
W. F. Boyd.
ISRAELITE. — An Israelite was one who belonged to the nation of Israel, regarded, more especially from the point of view of the nation, as the re- cipient of Divine favour and special privilege. An Israelite is a member of a chosen people and as such is the sharer of the blessings belonging to that people. It is a name of honour, and is to be distinguished from both 'Hebrew' and 'Jew,' the former being, at least in NT times, a Jew with purely national sympathies, who spoke the native Hebrew or Aramaic dialect of Palestine ; while the Jew was one who belonged to the ancient race wherever he might be settled and whatever his views. Every Jew, however, regarded himself as a true Israelite, and prided himself on the privileges which he, as a member of the favoured nation, had received when other nations had been passed by. The Apostle Paul refers to these privileges when he describes his ' kinsmen according to the flesh ' as Israelites ' whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises' (Ro 9^). He knows the way in which the Jew boasts of them, and claims that he can share in that boasting as well as any of his detractors. 'Are they Israelites? — so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham?— so am I' (2 Co IP^). This feeling of exclusive national privilege led in many cases to the rejection of the gospel by the Jews, who did not wish their privileges to be extended to the heathen Avorld. This rejection of his mes- sage by those who were Israelites by birth caused the Apostle to conceive of a true or spiritual Israelite as equivalent to a believer in Jesus Christ — one after the type of Nathanael of Jn I'*', an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile (cf. art. Israel). The Apostle applies the term in its natural sense to himself in Ro IP, 'I also am an Israelite,' in order to show that all the members of the race have not been rejected by God, but that there is a remnant according to the election of grace — Israelites who are Israelites indeed, not merely by outward physical connexion, but also by moral and spiritual characteristics.
W. F. Boyd.
ISSACHAR.— See Tribes.
ITALIAN BAND.— According to Ac 10\ the centurion Cornelius, of the cnre2pa 'ItoXikt^, Avas in Caesarea about A.D. 40. The adjective indicates that the 'cohort' (RVm) consisted of native Italians. Now, as a province of the second order, Judsea, of which Caesarea was the administrative centre, was not garrisoned by legionaries, who were Roman citizens, but by auxiliaries, who were provincials. How, then, could an auxiliary cohort be called Italian? Josephus states that there were five cohorts, composed of citizens of Caesarea and Sebaste, stationed in the former city at the time of the death of Herod Agrippa (Ant. XIX. ix. 2, XX. viii. 7), and Blass suggests (in loco) that one of the five may have been called the cohors Italica, as being composed of Roman citizens who had made their home in one or other of the two cities. Schiirer has no doubt that one of the five is the Augustan cohort mentioned in Ac 27^, but he refuses to identify another (or the same one) with 'the Italian.' Indeed, while he produces monumental evidence that 'at some time or other a cohors Italica was in Syria,' he thinks that the story of Cornelius lies under sus- picion, ' the circumstances of a later period having been transferred back to an earlier period ' (HJP
I. ii. [1890] 53 f.). Ramsay regards this suspicion as groundless, and makes effective use ( Was Christ born at Bethlehem?, 1898, p. 260 f. ).of an inscription recently discovered at Camuntum on the Upper Danube — the epitaph of the young soldier, Pro- culus, a subordinate officer (optio) in the second Italian Cohort, who died there while engaged on detached service from the Syrian army. Syrian troops, under Mucianus, were certainly engaged on the Lower Danube, and probably on the Upper, in 69 B.C. (Tacitus, Hist. iii. 46). When their campaign was ended, they were doubtless sent back to Syria ; and the same legions frequently remained a very long period, sometimes for cen- turies, in one province.
'The whole burden of proof, therefore, rests with those who maintain that a Cohort which was in Syria before [A.D.] 69 was not there in 40. There is a strong probability that Luke is right when he alludes to that Cohort as part of the Syrian garrison about a.d. 40.' Besides, ' the entire subject of detach- ment-service is most obscure ; and we are very far from being able to say with certainty that the presence of an auxiliary centurion in Ceesarea is impossible, unless the Cohort in which he was an officer was stationed there ' (Ramsay, op. cit. 265,