The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

The Year of Living Biblically answers the question: What if a modern-day American followed every single rule in the Bible as literally as possible. Not just the famous rules – the Ten Commandments and Love Thy Neighbor (though certainly those). But the hundreds of oft-ignored ones: don’t wear clothes of mixed fibers. Grow your beard. Stone adulterers.

And so reads the blurb on the back of the book, but the truth is that A.J. Jacobs does not follow every rule, he can't, and that is what makes the book interesting. Full disclosure, I bought this book because I was hoping to be able to learn more, so I could argue with biblical literalists. I wanted to go off on those people who say, "I believe every word in the Bible." While I still think those people are idiots, I got a lot more than that out of this book. In fact, I have a new respect for the Bible and it's complications.

There are so many large and small questions this book brought up that it is hard to know where to start. There are thousands of rules in the Bible and around 650 that Jewish rabbis still enforce. Most are in the Old Testament. So, one of the first big questions you have to ask is, did Jesus' sacrifice, as the New Testament laid it out, erase the need to follow all the old rules? There are many conservative Christians that believe this is the case. Also, there are moral rules and there are "procedural" rules, and it's not always easy to determine which is which. Not wearing clothes of mixed fibers is a procedural rule, not committing adultery is a moral rule. Some have chosen over the years, to only follow the moral rules and discard the procedural rules. Another interesting issue is whether or not the translation is always right. For example, one of the commandments we all know is, you shall not kill. This is confusing as there are plenty of other places in the bible that killing is clearly approved of, like stoning adulterers. Some have suggested that the commandment was original worded as "you shall not murder." This would make more sense. A further complication, what is adultery? According to the times, it was when a married women had sex with a man. A married man was free to sleep with other non-married women. So should we obey the rule as it was intended then, when women and children were seen as property, or a more modern interpretation? Some on the supreme court would say, you enforce it as the framers intended.

Needless to say the book goes on to delve into many other rules from major to amazingly obscure. Every time Jacobs found a bizarre rule that he was sure he would be the only person in the world to follow, he was able to find a group that was dedicated to following it. You are never alone when it comes to Bible rules. Another fun exercise is trying to figure out why some rules were instated. No one is really sure why there is a ban on pork. There are also a lot of birds you are not supposed to eat, but the scholars disagree on the translations of the animals names, so to be really safe you should go vegetarian.

I'll go back to the book blurb and say, this book is reverent and irreverent at the same time, but you can't read it without thinking about some of these rules and how many of them really make sense and make the world a better place. I still don't literally believe every word in the Bible, but this book made me want to explore it more.