The Year of Living Biblically

No, not me, silly. It's a book. A.J. Jacobs (author of The Know-It-All wherein he documents his adventures in reading the entire encyclopedia Britannica) this time has decided to spend a year following every rule laid out by the Bible. Jacobs is Jewish, but not in any real religious sense. As he points out, about the only Jewish thing his family did growing up was to put a star of David atop their Christmas tree. Anyway, he sets out to obey as strictly as possible, not only the ten commandments, but also every rule from the Bible that he can, from blowing a horn at a new month, to stoning adulterers, to not wearing cotton and linen together.

Now, of course he can't quite always do it the way the Bible mentions, since many of those animal sacrifice practices would be illegal in the US, as would chucking boulders at people. (His solution for the stoning of adulterers is that the Bible never says how big the stones must be. He opts for pebbles.) But as much as this seems like it would be a book full of non-stop poking fun at crazy things the Bible says, it really isn't.

Through it all, Jacobs actually attempts to obey the spirit of the laws whenever he can. Though not a religious man at all, he does learn to awaken a bit of his spiritual side. He discovers that he enjoys prayers of gratitude, and that wearing white improves his mood.

After a year of living Biblically (about 9 months focusing on the O.T. only, and then a few months of adding the N.T. to it) he hasn't re-awoken as a Jew, nor has he adopted Christianity, but he feels that he's learned something important on the way.

The book is at times silly, and still has spots where can't help but poke a little fun at religions he doesn't understand, but he is generally very respectful. It's interesting, though not as good as "The Know-It-All" in my opinion.