OH WOW> Amazing. This book has been on our shelf forever. It's big. It's daunting. But I started and here's what's amazing: it's readable. Very.
And it's important. I can see how this book has influenced our thought for the last 25 years. He summarizes theological development succinctly and makes such a powerful argument for HOW to read the Gospel of Mark. I think I shall never be the same.

Later> p.146 “Quite the contrary: I mean action whose fundamental significance, indeed power, lies relative to the symbolic order in which they occurred.”
This is the genius of the man: that he can load this otherwise incomprehensible sentence with such meaning that I weep. I remember this to be true on our wedding day when I felt our vows in the privacy of my body.
This is a heady text. It is the first book which I have ever read simultaneously in three different parts. I’m reading from the beginning, as is normal, I suppose, but then (since that is tough going, even the Ched himself recommends skipping ahead) so I am reading from the beginning of chapter 3 as well and then because my own personal reading in Mark is further ahead, I am reading from Chapter 5. And going forward in all 3 sections so that I am as of today on pages50, 158, and 183. I’m tempted to read from the rear forward as I often do as well.
(Is this reading style influenced by reading linked passages on the internet?)
It is curious that I am reading this book in conjunction with its polar opposite in every way but faith - Untie the Strong Woman.

More great quotes:

pg. 255:"What is the meaning of Resurrection? ...is it not the exorcism of crippling unbelief, which renders us dead in life (Mark 9:22) rather than alive in our dying (8:35)?"
pg. 255, down a few lines, " To pray is to learn to believe in in a transformation of self and world, which seems, empirically, impossible. (11:23). What is unbelief but the despair, dictated by the dominant powers, that nothing can really change...." p.256 "Is not prayer the intensely personal struggle within each disciple, and among us collectively, to resist the despair and distractions that cause us to practice unbelief, to abandon or avoid the way of Jesus?" ( )

It took me 25 years to get around to reading this, and I dearly wish I had read it sooner. Myers' once groundbreaking study of the Gospel of Mark surprised me, informed me, changed the way I read and hear Mark, and gave me much to reflect upon. This book reminds us why nonviolence is so difficult, because it requires us to be ready to die, The cross is the logical end of those who follow the way of nonviolence, as death was the end of the journeys of Jesus, Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others whose names do not echo through our minds. ( )

A tough, but satisfying read. Tough because the structure is complicated - and not entirely successful?, satisfying because you are left re-thinking for a long time after you've put the book down. ( )

As I already mentioned when I reviewed Ched Myers popular level remix on this commentary entitled "Say to this Mountain: Mark's Story of Discipleship" this is a watershed commentary and quite literally a radical re-visioning of this incredibly well loved story. Walter Wink said that this is "quite simply, the most important commentary on a book of scripture since Barth's Romans."

As Myers makes clear from the beginning, this is a political reading of Mark where he attempts to discern the ideology reflected in the narrative. He applies strong critical skills (e.g. historical and literary criticism, sociological exegesis) when reading Mark and the results are nothing less than amazing.

He begins setting up for us (the readers) what his reading site and strategy is for Mark. Then he proceeds to elucidate the socio-historical site of Mark's story of Jesus, and only then does he proceed with commentary. After he finishes with his commentary he closes out the book with a section that explores what all this means in terms of radical discipleship. In other words this is where he tries to bridge the horizons of the ancient and modern worlds.

The one thing I did not like about the book was how he structured the commentary. He tried to hold a certain tension between chronology and theme but the result was less coherence and more confusion. It would have been simpler to just stick with chronology and literary units.

Nonetheless, a fine commentary from a perspective that is all too often dismissed outright. If you are open to what a liberation theologian has to offer in terms of exegesis, history, and hermeneutics then give Myers' incredible commentary a try. ( )