The Year of Living Biblically

by A J Jacobs

Avoiding shellfish was easy. The stoning of adulterers proved a little more difficult - and potentially controversial. Was it enough to walk up to an adulterer and gently touch them with a stone? Even that could be grounds for accusations of assault, especially with female adulterers in Manhattan. So what's a good Bible-reading boy to do? Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in head first and attempt to obey the hundreds of less-publicized rules. The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal, and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.Jacobs immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, fights idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin. His beard grows so unruly that he is mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He tours a Kentucky-based Creationist museum, dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and studies scripture with Jehovah's witnesses.
And he wrestles with the seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first century brain, yielding unexpected ephiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers secular and religious, "The Year Of Living Biblically" is part York Notes to the bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down...

• ISBN10: 0434017116
• ISBN13: 9780434017119
• Publish Date: 7 February 2008 (first published 1 October 2007)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 9 January 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Cornerstone
• Imprint: William Heinemann Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

The Bible is a historical document. The Old Testament dates back to hundreds of years before Christ, and the New Testament to within 100 years after his death. It's a holy book, but it's also the product of two distinct time periods, both very long ago. It's filled with rules, both specific and vague, that reflect the world of nomadic, desert-dwelling herding people rather than the world in which most Judeo-Christian people live today. Writer A.J. Jacobs decided to see what it would be like to actually try to live by these rules in the modern world in his book, The Year of Living Biblically. As Jacobs is a secular Jewish husband and father in New York City, wackiness ensues.

He's no stranger to offbeat projects...he'd previously written a book about his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. But when he was doing prep work for this book and realized that the Bible contains over 700 rules, ranging from very specific things like fiber-mixing and beard trimming prohibitions to very general things like restraining from covetousness, he decided to focus on the Ten Commandments first and tackle as many of the others as he could, because he knew he couldn't do all of them every day. He also seeks out people who are devoted to their religious beliefs in their own ways, leading to a visit to Amish Country, the Creation Museum, to see snakehandling Pentecostals, and even an overseas trip to Jerusalem. This on top of a regular job writing for Esquire, parenting a small son, and being a partner to his pregnant wife.

Jacobs is witty without being snarky, which is a good tone for this book. There's sometimes a tendency among secular types to get condescending about matters of religious faith and belief, which is counter-productive at best. He admits that since he's deeply agnostic, one of the hardest rules for him to follow is regular prayer, but he gamely tries anyways and is honest about both his initial discomfort and the ease that grows after months of practice. After having a hard time, in a hyperconnected world, retreating into the quiet of the Sabbath, he comes to look forward to that time to unwind and recharge. While he can't quite get into the harshness of parenting his son from a "spare the rod, spoil the child" perspective, he knows he needs to be better about discipline and he starts taking steps in the right direction.

I found this book enjoyable, if a little on the lightweight side. Although it's necessarily from Jacobs' perspective, I found myself really curious about how his wife felt about this particular experiment and what it was like to live with someone doing this. It's pretty clear from what Jacobs writes that his wife was often irritated by the project, and his frequent absences while leaving her with their son to handle while she was pregnant with twins had to be absolutely infuriating. Then again, that Jacobs seemed to simply expect her to shoulder the mental and emotional burden of dealing with his choices isn't really out of line with the very patriarchal culture in which the Bible was steeped. Recommended for people curious about religion and/or with a sense of humor about their own.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

A.J. Jacobs is a journalist and editor of Esquire magazine, who has some really interesting ideas for memoirs. I first heard about Jacobs by a friend who read his book; The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, in which he all 32 volumes of the 2002 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. While I’m yet to read this book (but I will) I decided to read The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

The book follows the journey of A.J’s alter ego; Jacob who read through the bible and then spent a year trying to live by it. Jacob tries to be honest, give up the Sabbath, pray daily, go forth and multiply, and any of the bazaar laws from the old testament, such as; trying to stone people, blowing a ram horn at the beginning of every month, tassels on his clothing, binding money to himself, even wearing white and never trimming his beard.

The Year of Living Biblically is a funny journey, A.J claims to be agnostic, so it makes the book interesting the way he tries to find the real intent behind every rule he follows. I’m a big fan of A.J’s wife, who while wasn’t pleased with him turning into a crazy man, accepted his choice to do this and even have some fun with it. If you are interested in reading an amusing memoir or just interested in seeing the effects reading the bible can have, I highly recommend this book.