Book bonanza!

Luke in Greek	Winter Soldier	Art of not being Governed

In the past 30 hours, I have completed three fascinating books (two of which I have been reading for some time): the Gospel of Luke in Greek, Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier, and James Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.

About Luke, I need say little. I tried to learn the vocabulary as I went along, which is why it took so long -- taking a couple weeks out to cruise through I Corinthians without looking up words. Luke's vocabulary is much more varied than John seems to be -- maybe 40 new words in a 50 verse chapter for Luke, 9 for the 50 verse first chapter of John. And the link with vocab in Acts is strong: it is obvious the same author wrote both. There are all kinds of insights one gains from reading Luke this way, a few of which I have shared here.

Winter Soldier is about a young Polish doctor from a wealthy family in Vienna who serves in a field hospital in the mountains during World War I. Of a reserved nature, he falls in love with the bossy nurse who teaches him real medicine. It is a beautifully-told story, full of poignant and vivid descriptions, which brings tears to the eyes in the end.

I've commented a few times on The Art of Not Being Governed. Scott is much more fond of hill tribes than of pushy governments. He sometimes touches on the coming of Christianity to the hill tribes of Southeast Asia, in a way that is more reductionistic and less detailed than the accounts of missionaries, but that generally supports what I've read and seen elsewhere.

"This new identity . . . promises literacy and education, modern medicine, and material prosperity . . . the presence of Christianity . . . ought to be seen as an additional vector, another resource, for group formation . . . The promise of literacy and the return of the Book (the Bible) were enormous attractions for the Hmong. Having had their book stolen, according to legend, by the Chinese, or having lost it . . .

"Previously the route to the secular trinity of modernity, cosmopolitanism, and literacy led through the Chinese and Thai lowlands. Now Christianity offered the opportunity to be modern, cosmopolitan, literate, and still Hmong."

Scott even admits this:

"According to Lahu legend, the first missionary, William Young, was prophesied by a Wa-Lahu religious leader a decade or so before his arrival." (321)

Don Richardson tells this story in Eternity in Their Hearts. I once visited a Lahu church in a remote corner of southern China founded, I think, by Young's sons.

Now don't expect me to finish another three books by Sunday!