Books in Brief

Biblical Israel: State and People

Benjamin Mazar, edited by Shmuel Ahituv (Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Israel Exploration Society, 1992) 175 pp., $25.00

Professor Benjamin Mazar has established an extraordinary legacy as teacher, editor, author and academic statesman. Even now as he approaches the completion of his ninth decade, he continues to flourish, to teach, to study and to publish. Mazar is the beloved teacher of many, if not all, of two generations of Israeli historians, archaeologists and historical geographers. And his influence as a teacher extends beyond the circle of those who have formally been his students. Indeed, I count William F. Albright (my Doktorvater) and Mazar (with whom I have never taken a class) as the two teachers who have influenced me most.

This volume of Mazar’s collected essays, published to honor him on the occasion of his 85th birthday, joins an earlier volume of collected essays published in his honor on his 80th birthday.^a Hebrew University’s Magnes Press has chooser an excellent way to honor a great man, offering a complement to the usual fashion of publishing collections of other people’s articles in festschrifts, of which Mazar has had several.