The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs
A Fascinating Look at Living the Bible at its Most Literal Word
May 24, 2009
Although this book had the potential to be preachy and ostentatious, Jacobs keeps it light and direct. The reader is able to get a sense of what it would mean to live as the ancient Jews did, rather than as "Sunday Christians" of the modern world. The things he learns while attempting this project are quite profound.
Love in the Bible
Although a self proclaimed agnostic when the project begins, he makes clear that his wish is to see what would happen if he lived the Bible according to its truest form, rather than picking and choosing. He acknowledges the difficulty of this, and begins his journey with the most important value: love.
This is the overriding theme throughout Jacob's project. He learns not only to "love his neighbor as himself" but also to love himself, his friends, strangers, and his God. It is, perhaps, the story of his neighbor that is the most disturbing and beautiful.
Nancy, Jacob's apartment neighbor, is an eccentric hippie from the sixties. She is reclusive, but stops by Jacob's place to talk about her Jimmy Hendrix manuscript. Although Jacob's mentions her periodically throughout his story, it is only when the stench coming from her apartment alerts him to her death that he realizes what the biblical statement of "doing unto others" really means in his life.
It is with his wife, as well, that Jacob's learns about love. They try and try to conceive another child, (as the Bible says to "go forth and multiply"), but they are consistently disappointed.
Medical science entwines with religion when they go to have IVF in a last attempt. It works, and they have twin boys. Jacobs discusses the gap between what he reads in the Bible regarding procreation and love, and what he and his wife feel about having two more boys to add to the one they already have.
It is a poignant, brutally honest look at the depths and complexity love brings to our lives, both in terms of religion and in terms of real life.
Tolerance in the Bible
While on his journey, Jacobs feels that in order to really delve into the Bible, he must learn from as many groups who read it "literally" as possible. This starts with the Jews of the Old Testament, those Orthodox believers with the most literal beliefs.
With them he learns about love and mysticism, about patience, and kindness, and the harsh judgement of a wrathful god.
He discusses having to sacrafice a chicken and the feelings of guilt, of ancient tradition and of the cultural feeling of fitting in while doing it.
Later, with the snake handlers of the New Testament, he learns that they are far less "odd" than he ever would have previously thought, and finds some of what they do disturbingly hypnotic.
What he comes away with is an understanding that no matter which religious group it is, they all must decide which bits of the Bible to follow most closely, as there are far too many rules and regulations to follow all of them. He (and the reader) come through with a broader, finer and more understanding picture of the many sects that use the Bible as their primary text.
Humor in the Bible
While many of the issues Jacobs faces are deeply complicated, he manages to infuse a great amount of humor in his project.
Because he finds in the Bible a section that says he should wear all white, he does so. Another section says he should grow his hair and beard and never cut them, and so he does. This all leads to him looking, at first, like someone a person would not want their children around.
But later, as he submerges himself further and further into the literal words of the Bible, he realizes that many people now look at him on the street as a sort of guru; a man of religous quiet.
He laughingly tells of his need to take a stool around with him, so that he does not sit where any "unclean" women have sat, as the Bible forbids this as well. Nor can he shake hands with them.
He writes Biblical sayings on his door-jamb because the Bible says to, (which leads him to acknowledge once again his wife's love).
This book is a fun, interesting read for both the religous and non-religous. In today's world of fundamentalism, of extremism and disbelief, he takes a road through the many sects of belief, and although he says that he has come out the other end of his year as a staunch agnostic, he cannot deny the beauty and simplicity that his journey through the Bible has brought into his life.
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. Arrow Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-0995-0979-0
