The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

One of the nice things about daughters is that they get you interesting books for your birthday - quite often ones that you'd never think of buying for yourself. One such book, which appeared in a recent birthday haul, was The Year Of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs.

It's essentially the diary of a year in Mr. Jacob's life during which he tries to live according to the rules in the Bible as closely as he possibly can. He actually reads the Bible cover to cover and writes out all the rules he can find. There are over 700 of them. Some, like 'You shall not kill'. seem sensible enough but many, like having to wear tassels on the corners of your clothes, are clearly crazy. But then, Mr. Jacobs is clearly a bit crazy himself. As he immerses himself in the madness of following rules about what he can eat, when you should stone people to death, and when you can touch your wife (or even sit where your 'impure' wife or some other woman has sat) it is increasingly obvious that no-one in their right mind would even consider following such rules. (He eventually buys himself a portable folding chair so he can sit down at home and in public places.)

The book would soon have become tedious if it wasn't that Mr. Jacobs is an entertaining writer and that he spends a bit of time meeting genuine religious loonies who are trying to live their lives according to the Bible (the Amish, Creationists, Hasidic Jews, etc.) He also talks to more normal religious loonies about how and why they can ignore all these rules. This reveals a few interesting factoids (like that Creationists have a terribly cynical attitude to 'intelligent design' - they see it as a ploy and have nothing but contempt for people who actually believe in it!) and the general insight that every single loony sect he interviews finds some way of denying the validity of the more awkward biblical rules, or of rationalising them so that they don't seem so bad. ('Stoning people to death' is just a metaphor, for example - especially when it comes to the Bible's clear instructions on when to stone your own children to death. 'You shall not kill' only refers to murdering people - you can kill all you like if the law allows it - so stonings and wars are just fine.)

Religion is just nonsense and this book, while entertaining, is just a bit of fluff. Yet it is disappointing that, after a whole year of living this demented lifestyle, Jacons fails to tackle any of the deeper theological issues, or even to cast any light on them. He certainly avoids almost any discussion of morality or ethics. For instance, he visits the Creationist 'museum', but doesn't face the issue of whether it is right or wrong to subject small children to such propaganda. He mentions rules about homosexuality and his personal distaste for them but never compains about their cruelty. He discusses infertility treatments (which he and his wife use and conceive by during the year) but skips the part about discarded embryos and doesn't go near embryonic stem-cell research. He pokes a bit of fun at the way many biblical heroes are polygamous, liars, cheats, slave-owners, sexits, racists and killers, yet never takes seriously the question of what that tells us about the Bible and its moral authority.

He also doesn't touch on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, even when a neighbour of his dies during his little spiritual adventure. He doesn't even talk about the soul.

I found the book interesting and entertaining but there really wasn't any centre to it. It ended up being just the diary of a weird stunt pulled by (yet another) neurotic New Yorker.

(And speaking of neurotic, Jacobs mentions a few times that he Googles himself from time to time to see how he's doing. Chances are then that he'll find this review one day. So, if you're reading this, A.J., sorry mate but your book disappointed me. I was hoping for a lot more. You had an almost unique opportunity to penetrate to the heart of the mystery of fundamentalism but seemed to shy away from all the difficult questions. Oh, and while you're here, your wife is a saint - but you already know that.)