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Photo courtesy Eilat Mazar

ON THE COVER: A bronze ring, held in place by a bronze cross, served as a door knocker in a fourth-to-seventh-century monastery at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The knocker recalls one of Jesus’ best-known sayings: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). The object is just one of many important finds uncovered over a decade of excavation by Benjamin Mazar, one of Israel’s leading archaeologists. Mazar’s granddaughter, Eilat, has taken up the role of publishing the excavation’s work; her “Temple Mount Excavations Unearth the Monastery of the Virgins” appears in this issue.