Reading Log #6: Second Half of Immersion Book

At this point, I'm only a little past halfway done with The Year of Living Biblically due to the fact that I am so busy, I would have to pull all-nighters just to be close to being done. I promise I'm doing the best that I can. So I can't really summarize the book but I talk about the research which is definitely more important than the summary.

A.J. Jacobs started his research on the Bible months before he began his year of biblical living. He spent hours reading different versions of the bible. He had Christian, Jewish, and hip hop bibles. He then went to write down every single law, which was over 700. He did his best to follow the popular ten commandments along with the more obscure ones. This meant that he had to spend a lot of time overthinking about religion. He also researched by interviewing and having conversations with other religious groups. For example, he out spoke a Jehovah's Witness and flew out to California to talk to a religious film director. A little more than halfway through the book, he goes to Jerusalem.

His goal was to become more religious person but he felt that he was just pretending. This was his flaw. But as he moved forward, it seemed that he found religion by instead of forcing himself to follow the rules, he realized that he wanted to follow them. He looked forward to the challenges that came across him. He hated when he missed his praying or didn't succeed in following a rule because he felt morally wrong. By stopping the tactic of taking the Bible literally, he interpreted it his own way and found peace.

This is the basic idea of the story. In my opinion, his research is strong. In the comments section of his TED Talk about his book (I'll link it below), people were negativity commenting on his research. They were saying things like he didn't actually find God because he looked at the Bible like a set of rules. I find this to be false because everyone has their own style of trying knew experiences; this was just his process. An example of someone who followed a little different was his cousin Gil, who started a cult and started to believe he was God. In this way, his research process was different but he still succeeded in his own way. Therefore, A.J. Jacobs did good research.