The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

#119
Title: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
Author: A. J. Jacobs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2007
Genre: memoir, religion
389 pages
I was pleasantly surprised by Jacob's documentation of his year of biblical literalism. When I began, I had a number of concerns, based in part on his last book, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. The Year of Living Biblically addresses some of the concerns I had in both instances about a rather mechanistic approach to a year-long, self-imposed, all-encompassing task. I'd have liked to see a more explicit discussion of the reality that by the time the Bible was redacted, much editing had occurred and the documents already reflected past practices that even then were functionally unknowable. (Having proofread upward of 25 volumes of Jacob Neusner's Talmud and Mishnah translations and commentaries (e.g., this kind of thing), I am all too aware of the multi-page disputes that one verb could provoke even hundreds of years ago). Jacobs does say a number of times that even biblical literalism involves interpretation and picking and choosing (he gives the example of not actually plucking one's eye out if it offends one), but it might have been useful for him to discuss in more detail that there was no period in which all of the laws found in either testament were actually followed simultaneously.

I'd also have liked more reflection on the process, a quarterly summing up, for example. Since the structure is chronological rather than thematic, at its worst it reads like a diary of tasks (today I threw a stone at an adulterer--check). Generally , however, Jacobs's narrative moves along at a reasonable clip, is pretty funny (though I do wonder why my local Borders stocks it under "Humor" rather than "Religion"), informative, and good-natured. Though some of Jacobs's actions are bizarre out of context, I imagine that many readers will identify with his ongoing difficulties telling the truth, not swearing, and trying to adhere to dietary restrictions.

Jacobs's account of following Old Testament prescriptions is more successful than his New Testament months, which are less richly detailed. He does talk about his difficulty as a Jew (even an agnostic Jew) in following some of Christianity's rules. I kept wishing he'd taken a full Old Testament year, then spent another year immersed in a religious tradition entirely alien to him. (I must say apropos of this that I don't blame him for not doing so, and his wife is saint enough as things stand).

For more tales of year-long obsessive pursuits, read Jacobs's The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, and Mark Obmascik's The Big Year. Please feel free to add comment with other year-long quests to do some big task. For general obsession, it's hard to go wrong with Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. If you'd like to drive a friend or relation to nervous exhaustion, give him or her all of these books at once. Enjoy!