Popular nature programs, such as the cable-television program Wild Discovery, are both appealing and frightening because they confront the audience with acts of pure violence that follow the natural law of the jungle and the harsh imperative of nature's food chain. Viewers are enthralled watching the leopard catch its prey: such is the power of violence.

First, a few remarks about the audience of the Gospel according to Mark. This study is based on the premise that Mark was read aloud in gatherings of Christians in the late first and early second centuries that were not necessarily liturgical in a narrow sense. Further, those who listened were not all equally committed to the Christian faith and probably assimilated and interpreted the instruction that they received in various ways. Some in the audience, even if they were familiar with the Pauline understanding of Jesus as the Son of God, may have preferred to de-fine Jesus' divine sonship in another, more traditionally Jewish way, to be discussed below. Finally, even if the Gospel was written primarily for insiders, it is likely that copies were available to interested or critical outsiders. Celsus's knowl-edge of the Gospels shows that this happened at least by the second half of the second century.

In 1997, the Harvard Theological Review published an article written by L. Michael White in which he “presents and analyzes evidence for the social location and organization of Jewish groups in the environs of Rome, specifically from the port city of Ostia” during the first centuries CE. White draws from two sources in his examination: archaeological remains of the Ostia synagogue and rather scanty—but important—epigraphical material, the Mindius Faustus and the Gaius Julius Justus inscriptions. White's study is the most extensive discussion of the archaeological evidence in English since the excavator, Maria Floriani Squarciapino, presented her preliminary reports from the excavations of the synagogue in the early 1960s. Despite the great interest that the synagogue at Ostia aroused when it was unearthed and excavated during two campaigns in 1961 and 1962, it has since been neglected by scholars.

A scholar who respects the nature of historical and archaeological evidence can hardly complain when others take his work seriously and read it carefully. So it is with gratitude that I offer this reply to Anders Runesson for his forgoing article in which my own work figures so prominently. I can honestly say that I have learned some things from it. Nor do I take undue umbrage at the clearly critical, albeit rather strident, tone. Some of it I attribute to the natural give-and-take of scholarly debate; some, to a few key misunderstandings on the part of Runesson regarding the terminology and intention in my earlier argument; and others, to the complex nature of the material under discussion. It is a matter of reading the evidence.

Marcel Simon (1907–1986) wrote many articles and published a number of books during a long, active career as a scholar. Yet he remains most prominently associated with the first of his books, Verus Israel, initially submitted as a dissertation. Published in 1948, Verus Israel was revised with the addition of a lengthy post-script in the original French in 1964, and translated into English in 1986. Based on research virtually complete before the war, this book is an outstanding example of new circumstances forcing scholars to revise their conceptions of the past. As Simon explains in the preface, his book is a response to the calamity of racist anti-Semitism. Although this anti-Semitism had been apparent even before the Second World War, its disastrous results had become painfully evident only in the war's aftermath. These were the issues that led Simon to re-examine the nature of the relationship between ancient Christianity and Judaism.

In a previous article published in this journal, I discussed the relation between the neurological system and some culturally prescribed forms of self-inflicted pain. I showed that the way humans experience and communicate pain depends on the cybernetic features of the peripheral and central nervous system. The body-self, our sense of coherent and embodied agency, was also discussed in its relation to neural function—Ronald Melzack's “neurosignature.” These topics traced a basic epistemology of self-inflicted pain. I showed that an intentional manipulation of systemic neural features could result in states of “self-transcendence,” or effacement, to which many mystics have aspired. These dynamics take place beneath the level of consciousness. They constitute a neuropsychology. But what happens at the conscious level, in the awareness of the self-mutilator? How do the neurological processes translate into decisions to hurt oneself, and what are the consequences of such pain? These questions are the subject of the present work. The discussion now moves to the psychological level of the experience of pain, but it builds carefully on the neurocybernetics of the previous article. There will be no deus ex machina Self who becomes magically reborn through the ordeals of pain. For reasons that will become explicit shortly, I will adhere to the strict rules of phenomenology that regulated the first article. The subject who undergoes pain will only be discussed as an expansion of the body-self.