The Year of Living Biblically
Over the weekend I read a book called The Year of Living Biblically, by A. J. Jacobs. The book is a fish out of water story (a phrase somewhat incredibly not used at all—in the book or on the dust jacket). Jacobs is a self described OCD latte-drinking New York liberal editor at a fashion magazine (Esquire) with a penchant for immersion journalism. His previous book was about reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. In Living Biblically, Jacobs tackles religion, particularly religious literalism, by attempting to live literally according to the Bible and all its often obscure proclamations. He even stones an adulterer!
Jacobs does humor pretty well. One chapter toward the beginning of the book in which he visits a creationist museum is quite funny. There is also the character of Mr. Berkowitz, a fundamentalist Jew who inspects Jacobs’ clothes to ensure he’s not wearing fabric of mixed fibers. Zany characters aside, most of the humor in the book comes from the battle of personalities between the author’s secular liberal self and his increasingly confident fundamentalist counterpart whom he refers to as Jacob. Jacobs is adept at portraying all the characters in the book, including both halves of himself, in a way that really encourages you to sympathize with their foibles.
Toward the end of the book, Jacobs seems to indicate that he (or perhaps Jacob) has had some minor spiritual transformation—just from following the rules—but it comes off as a schmaltzy way of tying up all the loose ends. It feels forced. There may be something to this transformation, but I suspect it has more to do with the author’s cognitive dissonance (a theory which gets several mentions in the book) than with any actual divine revelation.
Incidentally, the book is full of interesting religious (primarily Orthodox Jewish) trivia. For example, I now know what schmaltz is.
The point you are supposed to come away with is, I think, this: moderation is always defined relatively. He points out that no matter how extreme the people he interviewed, they always thought they were in the sweet spot of moderation. Everyone, no matter how literal they think they are being, is picking and choosing which parts of the Bible they choose to follow. Jacobs actually portrays this positively, but I draw a different conclusion. If everyone is picking and choosing which parts of the Bible merit attention they must be basing that decision on some other external (to the book) sense of morality or legality. Does that not relegate the status of the Bible to mere literature? Surely there are many good and worthy stories in the Bible, but if simply being in the Bible does not grant them automatic status as Truth, why should they be any more valuable as moral lessons than any other stories? By opening any part of the Bible to figurative interpretation, you necessarily open the whole book to figurative interpretation and lose the right to claim any part of it as divine law or moral imperative.
Theological quibbling aside, the book is quite entertaining and I think the religious and the secular alike will enjoy it. Oh, and he grows a huge funny-looking beard.
