Book excerpt: Professor Benjamin Mazar is the dean of modern historians and archeologists in Isreal, and formerly the head of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has raised a number of brilliant scholars and archeologists who are now responsible for the well-known excavations in the country. Known the world over, his daily "think" sessions invariably attract the best minds in interpreting the finds and ongoing progress of the vast excavations at the Temple Mount. In the process Professor Mazar and his associates have been able to resolve or clarify many obscure and debatable points in the scholarly and popular literature about the city, both ancient and modern. He has scrupulously shunned speculation and debatable interpretation in the accretion of hidden data. His finds have also revised the atlas of the biblical city.