As of right now, I am on page 151 of the book
The Year of Living Biblically. This is book about the author himself, A. J. Jacobs. For one year, he decides that he is going to take the bible literally and live a biblical life. He does this because he wants to feel more connected with God in the modern atmosphere of New York City. He vows to follow the 10 Commandments along with over 613 unpopular rules like stoning adulterers, blowing a horn at the beginning of each month, and not wearing mixed fibers. Because it is very overwhelming to focus on all 613 rules every day all day, he tries to focus on one important rule a day while still trying to follow the others to the best of his ability. He also researches about religion every single day intensively. Each day, he talks to different pastors, mentors, or followers to have a conversation about God. He has talked to Rabbis, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, a few crazy characters. To take his research even further, he travels to different states and plans to visit Israel to see different religious communities and sacred cities like Jerusalem.
Where I am in the book, he is on month 5, day 124. He has a lot so far, and I am very impressed by his dedication. There are a couple things they I found interesting in the story so far:
- There is a rule in the bible that says you must
kill magicians and sacrifice oxen (pg 8)
- There’s over 3000 versions of the Bible in just
English alone (pg 9).
- There are liberal believers who think that
Darwinism is real but also the root to racism.
- Aj has a sense of humor and it adds to the story. For example, there is a character that named Mr. Berkowitz that tests Aj's clothes for mixed fibers and always calls to come pray with him. Aj makes fun of him so much that he turned his name into a verb.
These are just a few things that caught my eye. Mostly, I find a lot of interesting facts about religion in the book that, growing up Catholic, I never knew. I am from a religious grammar school where every Monday and Sunday I went to church and every Wednesday, the pastor would come speak to individual grade levels. He would always share stories from the bible and made them fun to listen to but it seemed he never talked about the crazy rules that believers had to follow. The more I think about it, I think that maybe he did talk about some of them but in a natural way to where the kids would think it's normal in our modern society.
In class, I am working with a team of 4 people to create a presentation to explain Aj's immersion to the rest of the class. My job is to talk about his rules for his project; not just the 613 rules he has to follow, but how he goes about following them. At the moment, I have a Word Document open whenever I am reading to take notes on what's going on in the book. I'm not sure how I'm going to talk for 3 minutes instead of 10 because the guy has so many rules. As stressful as the project is to think about and wondering if I'll finish on time, I am enjoying the book a lot and it's giving me an improved look at religion that I didn't have before.
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