The Year of Living Biblically

Hardcover, 388 pages

English language

Published Oct. 1, 2007 by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:: 978-0-7432-9147-7
OCLC Number:: 209693792
Goodreads:: 495395

Avoiding shellfish was easy. The stoning of adulterers proved a little more difficult - and potentially controversial. Was it enough to walk up to an adulterer and gently touch them with a stone? Even that could be grounds for accusations of assault, especially with female adulterers in Manhattan. So what's a good Bible-reading boy to do?

Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the hundreds of less-publicised rules. The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal, and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.

Avoiding shellfish was easy. The stoning of adulterers proved a little more difficult - and potentially controversial. Was it enough to walk up to an adulterer and gently touch them with a stone? Even that could be grounds for accusations of assault, especially with female adulterers in Manhattan. So what's a good Bible-reading boy to do?

Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the hundreds of less-publicised rules. The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal, and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.

1 edition

JIm FUlner reviewed The Year of Living Biblically by Jacobs, A. J.

Can you lead others to Christ while following ever single rule?

4 stars

My Aunt Maryls gave me this book last December (but not for Christmas?) I started reading it in January and finally finished it now. Really it reminds that one of the things I really love about library books, due dates. So I couldn't give it 5 stars because if it was that great, even without a due date I'd be done by now, oh well. Still pretty good.

basically AJ Jacobs decides he's going to try to take the bible literally (think "don't shave your beard" "don't were mixed fibers" "keep the word of God at your finger tips") in an attempt to mock Christianity.

Jacobs is over Jewish decent but he's "about as Jewish as Olive Garden is Italian" in his own words.

Through the year he really finds God, though he resists the urge to truly become born again (he got damn close with the …

My Aunt Maryls gave me this book last December (but not for Christmas?) I started reading it in January and finally finished it now. Really it reminds that one of the things I really love about library books, due dates. So I couldn't give it 5 stars because if it was that great, even without a due date I'd be done by now, oh well. Still pretty good.

basically AJ Jacobs decides he's going to try to take the bible literally (think "don't shave your beard" "don't were mixed fibers" "keep the word of God at your finger tips") in an attempt to mock Christianity.

Jacobs is over Jewish decent but he's "about as Jewish as Olive Garden is Italian" in his own words.

Through the year he really finds God, though he resists the urge to truly become born again (he got damn close with the snake handlers). I think it would be good for mainline Christians who think that evangelicals take things too literally, it is good for evangelicals who think they know everything God has to say, I its good for atheists who see it all as hog wash. But it still leads something that we need to do. It still needs the extra push. To find God in what appears to be ridiculous, and to find ridiculousness in the love of Christ.

The book claims to be humor, thought I didn't find it funny, take that as you like. I still felt it was 4-star worthy.

There were two parts towards the end that were hard for me, circumsing his son, and shaving his beard.

Subjects

Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc