The Year of Living Biblically
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.
By A.J. Jacobs
Simon & Schuster
I’ve just finished reading this book. It is easily one of the better books I have read this year. It was funny, reverent, irreverent, thought provoking. I was amazed at just how far A. J. Jacobs was willing to go on this project.
Imagine setting out just to follow the city ordinances of your home town. No jaywalking. No illegal U-turns. Is your pet up to code? Is there a rule on how and where you can stack your fire wood? There are laws on vermin and pesticides, utility encroachment, Weapons, nuisances, minors, liquor, traffic, zoning, handbill distribution, and possibly even Dutch Elm Disease.
It seems impossible to live by the laws of our cities and towns which were written by elected officials, hopefully within the last century.
Now imagine what it must be like for an agnostic man with a real job in New York city to follow the rules of the bible. Eight months in the Old Testament and four months in the New.
The bible certainly has more rules than just the ten commandments. The author found over 600 of them. Following all of those rules would have turned some men mad.
Perhaps the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, which he did, with his wife Julie, was a stabalizing factor during his year. Perhaps his keeping the Sabbath as a strict day of rest helped to maintain his sanity as well.
He must have had something (God?) to keep him sane while the bible rules forced him to wear white garments with no mixed fabric (with tassels) and to carry a cane/chair so he would not sit where the un-pure had sat.
Of course there were many rules that were easy to follow. “Blow the trumpet at the new moon” –Psalms 81:3 seems easy enough. The one about not boiling a young goat in the milk of it’s mother, I would think, would not be too hard for a New Yorker to obey. Stoning an adulterer could get you shot, but he tried anyway.
Though the book was entertaining to say the least, there are some very insightful passages that should give a person pause, perhaps to look at their own life and how they live it.
Whether a fundamentalist or a cynic, a Jew, Christian or atheist, A. J. Jacobs has written a book we all can love.