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III. The name of “Jew” and “Israelite” became synonymous terms from about the time of the Captivity. It is one of the absurd fallacies of Anglo-Israelism to presuppose that the term “Jew” stands for a bodily descendant of “Judah.” It stands for all those from among the sons of Jacob who acknowledged themselves, or were considered, subjects of the theocratic kingdom of Judah, which they expected to be established by the promised “Son of David “—the Lion of the tribe of Judah—whose reign is to extend not only over “all the tribes of the land,” but also “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

“That the name ‘Jew,’ writes a Continental Bible scholar, “became general for all Israelites who were anxious to preserve their theocratic nationality, was the more natural, since the political independence of the Ten Tribes was destroyed.” Yes, and without any hope of a restoration to a separate national existence. What hopes and promises they had were, as we have seen, linked with the Kingdom of Judah and the House of David.

Anglo-Israelism teaches that members of the Ten Tribes are never called “Jews,” and that “Jews “are not “Israelites”; but both assertions are false. Who were they that came back to the land after the “Babylonian” exile? Anglo-Israelites say they were only the exiles from the southern kingdom of Judah, and call them “Jews.” I have already shown this to be a fallacy, but I might add the significant fact that in the Book of Ezra this remnant is only called eight times by the name “Jews,” and no less than forty times by the name “Israel.” In the Book of Nehemiah they are called “Jews” eleven times, and “Israel” twenty-two times. As to those who remained behind in the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the Persian Empire, which included all the territories of ancient Assyria, Anglo-Israelites would say they were of the kingdom of “Israel”; but in the Book of Esther, where we get a vivid glimpse of them at a period subsequent to the partial restoration under Zerubbabel and Joshua, they are called forty-five times by the name Jews,” and not once by the name “Israel” !

In the New Testament the same people who are called “Jews” one hundred and seventy-four times are also called “Israel” no fewer than seventy-five times. Anglo-Israelism asserts that a “Jew” ‘is only a descendant of Judah, and is not an “Israelite”; but Paul says more than once: “I am a man which am a Jew.” Yet he says: “For I also am an Israelite.” “Are they Israelites ? so am I” (Acts 21:39; 22:3 Rom. 11:1; 2 Cor. 11: 22; Phil. 3:5).

Our Lord ‘was of the House of David, and of the tribe of Judah after the flesh—”a Jew”; yet it says that it is of “Israel” that He came, who is “over all, God blessed for ever” (Rom. 9:4, 5). Devout Anna was a “Jewess” in Jerusalem, yet she was “of the tribe of Aser.” But enough on this point.

http://www.bibletopics.com/biblestudy/152c.htm