New book hitting the stands about a dude who crawls through a full year following every rule in the Bible religiously (pun intended): "He hires an earnest New York shatnez tester to ensure that his garments don't mix wool and linen (Deut. 22:11).The book is The Year of Living Biblically, and the dude is one A. J. Jacobs. Jacobs calls himself “a secular Jew” who never utters the world “Lord” unless it’s followed by “of the Rings.”
"He can't utter the names of false gods (Exodus 23:13), which means that "I'll have lunch with you on Thursday" or "let's get the kids together for a play date on Wednesday" are flat out, since Thursday and Wednesday honor Thor and Woden, respectively.
"He won't touch his wife during and just after her period—or any woman, for that matter (Lev. 15:19). He can't even sit on a chair a menstruating woman has occupied, which makes navigating the Manhattan subway a bit tricky.
"He allows the sides of his hair to grow uncut (Lev. 19:27), and by the end of the year the fashion-challenged combination of his long earlocks and all-white garments (Eccl. 9:8) causes people to cross to the other side of the street rather than encounter him...."
The snips above came from a review by Jana Riess. Go HERE for more of it.
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Thnx to scott ableman for the foto; go HERE to read more about it.
I wrote a review of that a while back on Amazon.com - check it out. He focused way too much on the Old Testament and other Jewish documents, and not much at all on the post-JC stuff, so the Christians will largely ignore it. He goes through some interesting stuff. If reading that book doesn't make people stop and think about the contradictions and absurdities in those books, I don't know what will. He does talk quite a bit about how the books were edited and altered through time, which in itself should make people question everything in it.
ReplyDeleteDid he sell his extra children into slavery?
ReplyDeleteBlessed Samhain to you, Athana!
He actually got an unpaid intern to satisfy the slavery parts - quite inventive, I thought.
ReplyDeleteThanks for crediting the photo but per flickr terms of use can you link to the photo page and not to the farm page? Thank you.
ReplyDeletehttp://flickr.com/photos/ableman/1452330287/