Italian Band
Italian Band
According to Act 10:1, the centurion Cornelius, of the , was in Caesarea about a.d. 40. The adjective indicates that the cohort (Revised Version margin) consisted of native Italians. Now, as a province of the second order, Judaea , 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 bean called the cohors Italica, as being composed of Roman citizens who had made their home in one or other of the two cities. Schrer has no doubt that one of the five is the Augustan cohort mentioned in Act 27:1, 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 suspicion, the circumstances of a later period having been transferred back to an earlier period (History of the Jewish People (Eng. tr. of GJV).] i. ii. [1890] 53f.). Ramsay regards this suspicion as groundless, and makes effective use (Was Christ born at Bethlehem?, 1898, p. 260f.) of an inscription recently discovered at Carnuntum on the Upper Danube-the epitaph of the young soldier, Proculus, 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 centuries, 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 detachment-service is most obscure; and we are very far from being able to say with certainty that the presence of an auxiliary centurion in Caesarea is impossible, unless the Cohort in which he was an officer was stationed there (Ramsay, op. cit. 265, 268).
James Strahan.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Italian band
the name of the Roman cohort to which Cornelius belonged (Acts 10:1), so called probably because it consisted of men recruited in Italy.
Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary
Italian Band
ITALIAN BAND.See Band.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Italian Band
i-talyan. See BAND.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Italian Band
An Italian cohort of which Cornelius was the centurion. It was doubtless so called because of the men being recruited in Italy. Act 10:1.
Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary
Italian Band
Ital’ian Band. See Army.