The first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter retraces and explains the interactions of Jews with other nations from the ancient kingdoms of Israel to modernity. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Navon argues that one cannot grasp Israel’s interactions with the world without understanding how Judaism’s founding document has shaped the Jewish psyche. He sheds light on the people of Israel’s foreign policy through the ages: the ancient kingdoms of Israel, Jewish diasporas in Europe from the Middle Ages to the emancipation, the emerging nineteenth-century Zionist movement, and Zionist diplomacy following World War I and surrounding World War II. Navon elucidates Israel’s foreign policy from the birth of the state in 1948 to our days: the dilemmas and choices at the beginning of the Cold War; Israel’s attempts to establish periphery alliances; the Arab-Israeli conflict; Israel’s relations with Europe, the United States, Russia, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United Nations, and the Jewish diasporas; and how twenty-first-century energy geopolitics is transforming Israel’s foreign relations today. Navon’s analysis is rooted in two central ideas, represented by the Star of David (faith) and the scepter (political power). First, he contends that the interactions of Jews with the world have always been best served by combining faith with pragmatism. Second, Navon shows how the state of Israel owes its diplomatic achievements to national assertiveness and hard power—not only military strength but economic prowess and technological innovation. Demonstrating that diplomacy is a balancing act between ideals and realpolitik, The Star and the Scepter draws aspirational and pragmatic lessons from Israel’s exceptional diplomatic history.

"In The Scepter and the Star, John J. Collins turns to the Dead Sea Scrolls to shed new light on the origins, meaning, and relevance of messianic expectations. The first Christians were Jews who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah - the Christ; Christians could be called "followers of the messiah." Other Jews did not accept this claim, and so the Christians went their own way and grew into a separate religion. The disagreement about the identity of the messiah is the root difference between Judaism and Christianity." "The recent disclosure of the full corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls now makes it possible to see this disagreement in a fuller context than ever before. The most stunning revelation of the new evidence is the diversity of messianic expectations in Judaism around the beginning of the common era. The Hebrew word "messiah" means "anointed one." According to the scrolls, the messiah could be a warrior king in the line of David, a priest, a prophet, or a teacher. He could be called "the Son of God." Jesus of Nazareth fitted the expectations some Jews of the time had of the messiah. The majority of Jews, however, had quite different expectations."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

When Princesses Rosalie and Scarlet went to bed on a breezy summer night, they didn't expect to awake to such a fright. Their father, the king's, scepter was taken by a thief. The royal family was in utter disbelief. The princesses sneak out of bed and find a small clue. Their mission is clear, they know what they must do. Along their journey, they meet friends who help them track the thief down. Will they find him and return the scepter to their father who wears the crown?

Drawing on the biblical text and using the latest astronomical research, this book presents compelling evidence that the historic star of Bethlehem that accompanied Christ's birth was actually a great comet.

This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us chapter by chapter through its most important stories--from the Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows how a group of anonymous, ancient interpreters radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Was the snake in the Garden of Eden the devil, or the Garden itself "paradise"? Did Abraham discover monotheism, and was his son Isaac a willing martyr? Not until the ancient interpreters set to work. Poring over every little detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations radically transform the Bible's very nature. Their sometimes surprising interpretations soon became the generally accepted meaning. These interpretations, and not the mere words of the text, became the Bible in the time of Jesus and Paul or the rabbis of the Talmud. Drawing on such sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish apocrypha, Hellenistic writings, long-lost retellings of Bible stories, and prayers and sermons of the early church and synagogue, Kugel reconstructs the theory and methods of interpretation at the time when the Bible was becoming the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. Here, for the first time, we can witness all the major transformations of the text and recreate the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the Common era--the Bible as we know it.