A product of 1970s Berkeley, California, Ched Myers' rich background in radicalism/liberalism/political activism has been brought to his Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988). As the subtitle at once conveys, this is no ordinary commentary on Mark's gospel; indeed, this text has undergone at least seven printings. Whatever image is first impressed upon the reader by the title/subtitle alone is quickly dispensed with as one reads the frontis material.
In his lengthy foreword, Daniel Berrigan reveals his special knowledge about Myers, Myers' Mark, Mark's Jesus, and Myers' Jesus. He writes of Myers' taking chances, daring to be passionate, indignant, ironic, loving: "He renewed the sap of the text, the zest, the risky start, the hope of finishing. He drew the text into life, our lives--where indeed, by supposition, the text was meant to lodge, to discomfit, ennoble" (xxii). But Berrigan is also part of Myers' radical/liberal "community" and so has a special affinity for what will eventually unfold for the reader.
According to Myers, Binding the Strong Man is a book "situated" in a newly emerging field of biblical study becoming known as "political hermeneutics," "sociology of the Bible," "liberation reading of scripture," or, simply, "socio-literary criticism" (xxv, xxvii). He prefers the latter, allowing it to distinguish his work against what he describes as the three current "schools" of criticism: materialist criticism, sociological exegesis, narratology. What he really means is that his interpretation of Mark is based "Marxist tradition"--specifically, "the theory of ideology, the task of ideological criticism, and a conflict model of society" (p. 36). He qualifies this by claiming that his adoption of Marxist philosophy (or, method) is not one of "historical materialism," which he believes to bind the cumulative history of society into one o...