Sebastian P. Brock is Reader in Syriac Studies at the Oriental Institute at Oxford and is the author of "The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem" (Kalamazoo, 1992). Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University and author of "Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints" (California, 1990).